Total Film - November 2023

TOTALFILM.COM NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 3 I f you ever wanted to feel that you could achieve more, just read our chat with Ridley Scott – who, at 85, is as prolific as ever. I needed a lie-down just chatting to his collaborators as they described the energy and massive brain power of the visionary director, and that was before we tracked back through his résumé of game-changing, world-building iconic movies with the man himself. That’s why we’ve dedicated our issue to a man whose cinematic imprint is huge and who is still creating more with this month’s epic-scale Napoleon and the incoming Gladiator 2 (yes, we will be entertained). And he’s already prepping his next movie – to paraphrase that impressed onlooker in When Harry Met Sally…: ‘I’ll have what he’s having.’ Elsewhere, we leaned into the Halloween month with our countdown of the greatest horror movies of the 21st century, which caused as much hexing and cursing in the office as any demonic entity. Though it’s rarely recognised by awards bodies, horror is a shudderinducing ride that reframes the world when done well. These 100 films are TF must-sees so put your All Hallow’s Eve to good use by ticking off some you haven’t seen yet. All treats, no tricks... Welcome to JANE CROWTHER, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF @JANEVGCROWTHER Enjoy the issue! CALL SHEET THIS ISSUE’S EXTRAS The A Haunting in Venice screening had a spirited intro by Agatha Christie’s great-grandson James Prichard, who lauded Sir Kenneth Branagh’s many gifts: ‘He was put on this Earth to make everyone else feel inadequate...’ MATTHEW LEYLAND @TOTALFILM_MATTL REVIEWS EDITOR Had a cracking time at the UK premiere of The Creator held in London’s Science Museum. No striking cast in attendance, so Gareth Edwards sent a video of the audience to a cast text chain, filmed in IMAX widescreen, naturally. JORDAN FARLEY @JORDANFARLEY NEWS EDITOR Loved liaising with Christopher Nolan on a tribute to Ridley Scott – work days don’t get much better than that! MATT MAYTUM @MATTMAYTUM DEPUTY EDITOR Chatted to Todd Haynes for his new movie, May December. Loved the fact he was proudly carrying the catalogue to the recent Pompidou Centre-staged retrospective of his work in Paris. JAMES MOTTRAM @JAMESMOTTRAM CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Ridley Scott’s Zoom setup was as cinematic as you’d hope. No peering into a laptop here. He sat at a boardroom table, shot by an eye-in-thesky camera as he talked Napoleon and his sixdecade career. JAMIE GRAHAM @JAMIE_GRAHAM9 CONTRIBUTING EDITOR My chat with Neil Maskell about his directorial debut, Klokkenluider, probably wins the prize for my sweariest and funniest interview – his words: ‘I’m the fucking cookie monster,’ will live in my head forever. EMILY MURRAY @EM ILYVMURRAY ENTERTAINMENT WRITER ONLINE

Contents TEASERS 7 THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES Let the new, Snow-centric Hunger Games begin! 11 THANKSGIVING We’re grateful for a new Hol#Urwk#kruuru#ľlfn1 12 NEXT GOAL WINS Wdlnd#Zdlwlwlġv#ihho0jrrg# vsruwv#prylh#nlfnv#rļ1 14 YOU TALKIN’ TO ME? Jduwk#Pduhqjkl#wdnhv# this chat to a Darkplace1 15 FINGERNAILS D#vfl0Ľ#urpdqfh#wkdwġoo# jhw#lwv#fodzv#lqwr#|rx1 22 WISH Disney continues its centenary celebrations zlwk#d#vwduu|#dqlpdwlrq1 26 REBEL MOON ]dfn#Vq|ghuġv#wdnh#rq#d# Star Wars0vw|oh#vsdfh#vdjd1 31 ROBERT CARLYLE The Scot hero on politics, Ehjelh#dqg#Gdqq|#Er|oh1 TOTAL FILM BUFF 102 IS IT BOLLOCKS? Is Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story#dfwxdoo|#edvhg# on a true story? 103 10 OF THE BEST Pluuruv$#Uhdg#wklv#Ľyh# wlphv#dqg#wkh#TF#vwdļhu#ri# your choice will appear! 106 DEMOLITION MAN Orrnlqj#edfn#rq#wkh# iruzdug0orrnlqj#Vo|2 Vqlshv#vfl0Ľ#ehowhu1# 109 GOLDEN GRAHAMS Our Jamie exhumes two fxow#4<:3v#kruuruv1# THE EMPEROR STRIKES BACK Ridley Scott’s behemoth Bonaparte biopic stars Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon THIS ISSUE 34 NAPOLEON Rxu#hqruprxv#Ulgoh|#Vfrww# celebration opens with an h{foxvlyh#qhz#orrn#dw#klv# odwhvw#Ľop/#dq#hslf#wdoh#ri# dq#doo0frqtxhulqj#ohdghu# +dqg#Qdsrohrq,1 40 GREAT SCOTT Frqwlqxlqj#wkh#Ulgoh|# special, the man himself wdnhv#xv#wkurxjk#wkh# vwdqgrxw#Ľopv#rq#klv#FY1 46 DIRECTORS’ CUTS Wkh#Ľqhvw#gluhfwruv# zrunlqj#wrgd|#sd|#wulexwh# wr#d#pdvwhu#vw|olvw/#zruog0 exloghu#dqg#zrunkruvh1 52 THE 100 GREATEST HORROR MOVIES OF THE 21ST CENTURY Rxu#pdvvlyh#frxqwgrzq#ri# wkh#ehvw#iuljkw#ľlfnv#wklv# vlgh#ri#wkh#ploohqqlxp1 64 THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER Wlogd#Vzlqwrq#dqg#Mrdqqd# Hogg reteam for a ghost story that only TF is calling The Boo-venir1 68 MAY DECEMBER Qdwdolh#Sruwpdq#dqg# Mxoldqqh#Prruh#khdg#xs# Wrgg#Kd|qhvġ#uhľhfwlyh# phorgudpd1 EVERY ISSUE 3 EDITOR’S LETTER Soxv#Whdp#TF’s latest dqwlfv#dqg#dqhfgrwhv1 72TOTAL FILM INTERVIEW Alfonso Cuarón on coming edfn#grzq#wr#Hduwk#diwhu# the Oscar-winning Gravity1# 112 DIALOGUE Pdlo/#udqwv/#wlfnhw#vwxev1 34 SCAN TO GET OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER #343 NOVEMBER 2023 4 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023 SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

7 SCREEN 82 KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON Why Martin Scorsese vkrxog#vwduw#pdnlqj#vsdfh# lq#klv#dzdugv#fdelqhw1 84 HOW TO HAVE SEX Brit-teen tale of sun, vhd#dqg#vhoi0glvfryhu|1 84 QUIZ LADY DznzdĽqd#soxv#Vdqgud#Rk# equals LOLs? Correct! 85 FOE Scenes from a future pduuldjh/#zlwk#Sdxo# Phvfdo#dqg#Vdrluvh#Urqdq1 86 THE KILLER Fincher’s latest thriller kdv#wkh#pdun#ri#txdolw|1# 88 BEYOND UTOPIA Vwxqqlqj#grf#iroorzlqj# idplolhv#ľhhlqj#Q#Nruhd1# 89 THE CREATOR Mrkq#Gdylg#Zdvklqjwrq# phhwv#Urer0wrw1# 90 PAIN HUSTLERS Skdupd#gudpd#shukdsv# ehvw#wdnhq#lq#vpdoo#grvhv1# 91 EXPEND4BLES Li#|rx#rqo|#vhh#rqh#Dqg|# Garcia movie this month, pdnh#lw#Pain Hustlers1 92 ROCK HUDSON: ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWED Sruwudlw#ri#wkh#Kroo|zrrg# lfrq/#klv#olih#dqg#Vlun1 93 RERELEASES Vfruvhvh/#FxduÕq/#Srzhoo/# Suhvvexujhu#dqg#d#juhdw# khur#qdphg#Nhylq#Edfrq1 95 TECH Vrxqgeduv/#vxshu0vfuhhqv# dqg#d#whoo|#lq#d#vxlwfdvh1 97 CLASSIC TV When a bionic man loves d#elrqlf#zrpdq111 98 SOUNDTRACKS Krz#d#fodvvlf#zdv#vdyhg# by Tubular Bells1 ‘VISUAL NARRATIVE IS MY STRENGTH. I FIND IT VERY EASY TO HANDLE EIGHT OR 11 CAMERAS AT ONCE’ 52 40 68 72 TOTALFILM.COM NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 5

SNOW PATROL L et the games begin!’ screamed the headlines when The Hunger Games arrived in 2012, kickstarting a filmic quadrilogy based on Suzanne Collins’ trilogy of bestselling YA books. But prequel movie The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes gives us the real start, showing how Panem’s Capitol rises from the ashes of war to become a shiny, soaring powerbase, and how the Games progress from rudimentary violence to mass entertainment. Set 64 years before The Hunger Games, we meet an 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) as he’s assigned to mentor Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler) for the 10th annual Hunger Games. The future tyrannical president is initially alarmed, given that Lucy is a tribute from impoverished District 12. But when she defiantly sings during the reaping ceremony, he spies an opportunity to turn the odds in their favour – her by surviving the deadly combat, and him by growing the Games from their grubby gladiatorial roots into a show-stopping event full of theatre and spectacle. ‘We start in a very different place with Snow,’ says Francis Lawrence, who returns as director after helming the second, third and fourth instalments of the series. ‘We see a young man who’s struggling, and who’s part of a family that’s lost their fortune. He’s putting on an act that he still has money, still has status. He also starts in a much more positive place than you would imagine. It’s part of what’s fun about the story, that you see him break bad.’ THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS & SNAKES Music and mayhem as the Games get off to brutal beginnings… TOTALFILM.COM NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 7 EDITED BY JORDAN FARLEY @JORDANFARLEY

Hanisch had 2-300 people working for him over a 13-month period. For the film’s showpiece sets, the arena, they extensively redressed the gigantic Fhqwhqqldo#Kdoo#lq#Zurfôdz/#Srodqg1 ‘The Games started out as just a walled-in arena,’ explains Lawrence. ‘Much more rooted and grounded. Nowhere for people to hide.’ Jacobson nods. ‘The Games are brutal and upsetting, and people don’t want to watch them. There are not any bells and whistles to distract people from the foundational horror of what these children are being forced into.’ Back to Lawrence: ‘And that starts to change in our film. You see it start to open up. That’s really exciting.’ Also exciting is how Collins finds room for adult themes in her YA fiction. Her original Hunger Games trilogy explored the consequence of war. Songbirds & Snakes ogles human nature. ‘There’s the Hobbes-ian view of, “Are we savage by nature?”’ says Lawrence. ‘Or the Locke-ian view of, “Are we all individuals deserving of rights and freedoms?”’ ‘It explores the allure of authoritarianism, and that could not be more timely,’ Jacobson chips in. ‘You’re seeing it around the world – the fragility of democracy, and why loads of people are drawn to alternatives. Democracy is on the wane, globally. And authoritarianism is on the rise. But [the film] is certainly not on a soapbox. It’s much more an exploration of our ability to find a common cause with each other, no matter how disparate our experiences and worldviews might be.’ Fascinating themes and fierce action? Let the games begin, indeed. JAMIE GRAHAM THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS & SNAKES OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 17 NOVEMBER. As for Lucy, she’s a different proposition to Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen. ‘Katniss is stoic, and very capable in terms of hunting and archery,’ points out Lawrence. ‘Lucy’s an entertainer. She can sing, she’s a performer. She has a different kind of charisma. She has a sexuality. She knows how to manipulate. She knows how to flirt.’ He offers a wry smile. ‘The [romantic] relationship between Snow and Lucy Gray is a big part of the film, but there’s a mystery to it all. They both need certain things from each other…’ Surgxfhu#Qlqd#Mdfrevrq#zrunhg#rq# all four of the previous Hunger Games movies. Back for this prequel based on Collins’ same-titled book, she feels that the central relationship will enrapture viewers, and that Lucy might just become as iconic as Katniss. ‘She’s a very charismatic, brave, defiant character. She believes in love, and is also able to shapeshift, which I think she has in common with Snow, and is really how they connect. But her defiance, and the way it’s expressed through her music, is pretty irresistible.’ Taking place 10 years after the war, the film is grittier than its predecessors, with a retro-futuristic vibe, given it’s a period piece set in a dystopian future. German production designer Uli Hanisch (Babylon Berlin, The Queen’s Gambit) desired a certain reality, and so counted back 64 years from now to look at the 50s and 60s for inspiration, studying how cities like Berlin looked 15 years after World War Two. ‘There’s a point of comparison,’ he says. ‘We started comparing all the 20th-century fascist regimes – like the Third Reich in Germany, and Italy with Mussolini, and Spain with Franco – and the Soviet Union. Every fascist regime has that idea of style, which is always between seduction and intimidation. If you look at Germany in the late 50s and 60s, nobody wanted to look back. Everybody was looking into the future. Every successful fascist regime is very good at creating this kind of “we are the greatest, we are the first to go” – and you can only create this feeling of being superior if you have a clear enemy. I think that’s the way the Capitol works. So it’s very shiny and elegant. At the same time, it’s intimidating.’ Jason Schwartzman as TV host Lucretius ‘Lucky’ Flickerman Hunter Schafer as Tigris Snow, Coriolanus’ cousin Lucy and the other tributes prepare to do battle 8 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023 SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS ‘It explores the allure of authoritarianism. And that could not be more timely…’ NINA JACOBSON

LIONSGATE Tom Blyth as Coriolanus Snow and Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray Baird Snow with close friend Clemensia Dovecote (Ashley Liao). Below, left: Peter Dinklage as Casca Highbottom NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 9

SHUTTERSTOCK HOT RIGHT NOW AUSTIN BUTLER IS RIDING HIGH T he strikes may have meant actors hiding away, but the star of Elvis is everywhere right now thanks to his swaggering ad campaign for YSL’s new fragrance. Striding around in black while sniffing orange blossom and talking (in interviews and ads completed pre-strike) about his multifaceted self-expression, Butler will be showing that his range extends considerably further than his award-winning portrayal of the King. He should have been following the rockand-roll wiggles with the murderous moves of a ‘psychotic Mick Jagger’ as bald Big Bad Feyd-Rautha in Dune: Part Two, which he told TF flexed similar acting muscles in terms of presence and ‘when you need to own a room with your energy’. But since Dune moved its release date into next year, the 32-year-old’s next turn is as a moody 60s biker in Jeff Nichols’ star-laden The Bikeriders, based on Danny Lyon’s seminal photo-essay book. With ecstatic reviews out of Telluride (‘cooler-than-cool’, ‘a bona-fide movie star’), Butler could be on the campaign trail again this year as well as fronting Apple TV+’s Band of Brothers follow-up Masters of the Air as a heroic WW2 pilot in the new year. He’s also making his move to producing with an adaptation of Don Winslow’s addictive Danny Ryan trilogy, kicking off with City on Fire. Potter’s David Heyman is co-producing and Butler will play Danny, a mob muscleman whose world is upended by turf warfare. A former teen star who admits to despairing of his output in his 20s, Butler pragmatically chose to focus on quality over quantity, treading the stage opposite Denzel and playing against type in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood to hone his craft. ‘I’ve been working as an actor since I was 12 years old, and hoping to do certain types of work, and work with certain people,’ he told TF before the strikes. ‘The thing that’s been guiding me is directors and other actors that I would just adore working with. I’m doing that.’ Sometimes you need a crooked road to get your head straight… JANE CROWTHER THE BIKERIDERS RELEASES IN CINEMAS ON 1 DECEMBER. DUNE: PART TWO OPENS ON 15 MARCH 2024. MASTERS OF THE AIR AND CITY ON FIRE ARE CURRENTLY TBC. 10 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023 SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

The Pilgrim stalks teenagers over Thanksgiving EXCLUSIVE H ow can you live up to that trailer?’ ponders Eli Roth with a literal stroke of his fetching moustache. ‘It’s just so nuts and so fun and goes so far into the boundaries of bad taste. How do you extend that for 90 minutes, and still make a real movie?’ He’s talking, of course, about his 2007 Thanksgiving trailer, one of four promos for fake exploitation movies that served as added (coming) attractions in the Grindhouse double bill by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. Set in Plymouth, Massachusetts over the titular holiday, slasher film Thanksgiving promised ‘no leftovers’ as masked killer The Pilgrim offed nubile teens. It included a scene in which a topless, trampolining cheerleader does the splits and lands on The Pilgrim’s upturned knife. Shot for $100,000 in two days at the end of the Hostel: Part II shoot, Roth’s degraded (in every way) trailer delighted horror fans to such an extent that he’s been trying to turn it into a feature ever since. But ‘joining the dots’ of the ‘crazy kills’ proved a thankless task. Then lightning struck… ‘We said, “Let’s pretend Thanksgiving was a movie from 1980 that was so offensive that every print was destroyed. All the scripts were burned. The director disappeared. The crew members changed their names. One person saved the trailer and uploaded it to the darkest corners of 4chan, and now it’s made it out. So this is a 2023 reboot.” And once we said that, it freed us up.’ The thought of Roth returning to horror after a 10-year hiatus with a straight-up slasher film is exciting: few are made these days, and fewer still get a mainstream release in theatres. Roth adores the subgenre – he and pal/ co-writer Jeff Rendell have dreamt of making Thanksgiving since they were 13 years old, hiring out The Mutilator, Make Them Die Slowly and Three on a Meathook, and they’ve populated Plymouth with the likes of Patrick Dempsey, Gina Gershon and Rick Hoffman as they paint it red. But will there still be a sexploitation vibe to this post-#MeToo production? ‘You better have a good reason for it, because it’s going to have different connotations in 2023,’ says Roth. ‘Look, I’ve been the guy that made something that was offensive and exploitative for the sake of being shocking. I’ve had that experience. So I wanted to make a movie that was fun for everybody. ‘So the trick, for me, was to come up with: “What is shocking in a different way?” I don’t want anyone to think my work is sanitised, because it’s certainly not. But how can I surprise people, and be distasteful and offensive in a way they don’t see coming? And I think that we did it.’ JAMIE GRAHAM THANKSGIVING OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 17 NOVEMBER. PILGRIM’S PROGRESS THANKSGIVING Eli Roth plans some nasty surprises as he reboots a non-existent classic… ‘I wanted to make a movie that was fun for everybody’ ELI ROTH SONY PICTURES The film poses as a modern reboot of a ‘cancelled’ 1980 sexploitation movie TOTALFILM.COM NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 11

PITCH PERFECT NEXT GOAL WINS Taika Waititi teams with Michael Fassbender for an underdog comedy. EXCLUSIVE I f you’re more into films than football, you still might be aware of American Samoa’s historic 31-0 loss to Australia in a World Cup qualifier in 2001, which is the starting point for 2014 documentary Next Goal Wins and Taika Waititi’s loosely adapted film of the same name. Like the doc, Waititi’s new comedy follows the hapless South Pacific team’s fortunes as they try to qualify for the 2014 tournament under the leadership of US-based coach Thomas Rongen, played here by Michael SEARCHLIGHT Fassbender. Next Goal Wins’ premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival in September had been a long time coming; shot at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, the film was delayed by both the pandemic and Waititi’s Marvel Cinematic Universe commitments. ‘After [the pandemic], I went off and shot and put out Thor: Love and Thunder [the MCU sequel released in July 2022],’ Waititi explains to Teasers at TIFF. ‘And then once that was done, I then got back into finishing this. There was a good year and a half when I didn’t edit on this – I didn’t do anything.’ It was, he says, ‘quite a nice experience… It was nice to come back to it with a little bit of time and distance. Everyone likes to rush, and thinks their first draft is genius… You’ve become a different person by the time you come back. You know exactly what’s wrong with the story.’ Talking of coming back, this autumn festival season saw Fassbender return with a double whammy (he also starred in David Fincher’s 12 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023 SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

‘[Michael Fassbender]’s one of the best improvisers I’ve ever seen’ TAIKA WAITITI The Killer at Venice), having not been in a film since 2019’s X-Men: Dark Phoenix. ‘He’s living his best life, racing Le Mans and being a Porsche driver,’ says Waititi of his leading man. ‘He was about to take a big break and just race cars, and then I talked to him. He graciously came back for a bit longer.’ Fassbender’s better known for intense dramas than knockabout comedies. Rongen is something of a straight man compared to the winningly goofy, self-deprecating American Samoa players he coaches, but there are still plenty of opportunities for Fassbender to get comedy shots on target. ‘I’ve always just loved watching him, and I knew, deep down, that he could be funny,’ says Waititi. ‘And he is an incredibly funny guy. I like finding actors and doing things with them that maybe isn’t what they’re known for, or isn’t their comfort zone. It’s really lovely with him, discovering that he’s got a real knack for comedy.’ It sounds like he was right at home in Waititi’s improvisational squad. ‘I know it sounds crazy, and also it sounds like I’m just promoting something,’ says the director, ‘but he’s one of the best improvisers I’ve ever seen.’ And when it comes to scouting comedy talent, he’d know. MATT MAYTUM NEXT GOAL WINS OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 26 DECEMBER. TOTALFILM.COM NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 13

C4’s Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace (2004) and, right, Marenghi’s new novel HODDER & STOUGHTON YOU TALKIN’ TO ME? FILM QUOTES POSE AS QUESTIONS. FILM STARS TRY TO COPE. IN THE CROSSHAIRS THIS MONTH… GARTH MARENGHI You talkin’ to me? That very much depends on the future tone of your questions. At this rate, no. You’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk? The question, rather, is do you feel lucky, punk? Because, believe me, junior, you should. I am the greatest, if not the only truly great horror writer of both the 20th and 21st centuries (plus the 19th and 18th, if you include my previous incarnations). Yet here I am, spending valuable time away from my writing and dreaming schedule to answer the second of these extremely vague and borderline insulting ‘questions’. I note, also, that you have failed to provide me with an answer to my question. How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight? I’m unable to answer that question because I have been in numerous fights since birth. From before birth, in fact. When I was a sperm, I fought off a wild pack of rival sperms and eviscerated all of them. And I’ve been fighting ever since. I fought against oppression throughout my nursery years and battled logic and reason throughout school. I fought daily and nightly and oft betwixedly ’gainst a publishing industry which has attempted to silence my mind from the get-go. Therefore, I can’t answer you. Ask a better question. Why so serious? Why so frivolous? That’s another of my questions to you, by the way. Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper? I’m six foot three. Depends how tall stormtroopers are. If they’re generally in the region of six foot, then no, I’m about average for a stormtrooper. If they’re under six foot, around the five-foot margin, say, then I’m technically a little tall for a stormtrooper. And I’m not a stormtrooper, by the way, so this question, like so many others here, are irrelevant to the promotion of my new book, Garth Marenghi’s Incarcerat. And I don’t earn a fortune from them. Yet there are a few things still capable of freezing my nuts in the dead of night. Twins (especially my own daughters); my wife Pam on perming day; my wife Pam in her new leathers; my wife Pam when reading my first drafts, and also the winds of change currently swirling through the horror industry and, more specifically, awards season. You talk the talk – do you walk the walk? Both, and frequently at the same time. Writing a novel generally adds over two stone to my overall body mass, so it’s important to generate a good amount of that wordage on the trot. Therefore I’ve rigged up one of my word processors to an exercise bike and use that for half an hour in the morning while shouting down to Pam to bring me up a decent breakfast. What’s your favourite scary movie? Garth Marenghi’s The Premonitioner, an adaptation of my own novel concerning precognitive doomsayer Tray Stichton, a man cursed with terrifying precognitive visions of his own terrifying precognitive visions, which themselves foretell the uncanny real-life playing out of said terrifying precognitive visions. It’s yet to be filmed, or written, but reviews are already in from the Institute of Psychic Seers, who all confirm that it’s a masterpiece. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven’t you? Indeed I have, friend, briefly, during the writing of my latest book Garth Marenghi’s Incarcerat. I shaved myself from pate to perineum, locked myself in a toilet for two days and ate oatmeal. But I’m fine now. My books are all essentially about ‘what ifs’… ‘What if a rat could drive a bus?’ Funny. Go read the book and find out. SIMON BLAND GARTH MARENGHI’S INCARCERAT IS AVAILABLE FROM 31 OCTOBER AND GARTH WILL BE ON TOUR ACROSS THE UK THROUGHOUT OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER 2023. even know what a stormtrooper is. Plus I don’t care. Have you ever danced with the Devil in the pale moonlight? Yeah, I dance with the Devil nightly and daily, though do generally prefer it when he’s sporting a female form. As a horror writer, it’s part of my job to parry and parley with Old Nick. Truth ’tis, frequent bouts of satanic cut and thrust come with the territory, in case any of your readers are contemplating a career in horror publishing. The Devil is a trickster, mind, so watch your wallet, and above all else, wear one. So what are you afraid of? Apart from my tax bill? Heh heh heh. Not much, friend. I can’t afford to be frightened of my own visions, or I wouldn’t be able to write them down and subsequently GARTH MARENGHI’S DARKPLACE , PSYCHO , SCREAM , FULL METAL JACKET , CREED , BATMAN , STAR WARS: EPISODE IV – A NEW HOPE , HE DARK KNIGHT , T FIGHT CLUB , DIRTY HARRY , TAXI DRIVER QUESTIONS TAKEN FROM: 14 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023 SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

EXCLUSIVE I f there were a test that could definitively prove that you and your partner were in love, would you take it? That’s the idea at the heart of Fingernails, a low-key sci-fi romance from writer/director Christos Nikou (Apples). ‘I wanted to make a comment on our society, and how we experience love right now, and how we are trying to find love through different ways, and dating apps, and social media,’ says Nikou when we meet at the Toronto International Film Festival. ‘It’s one of the most elusive things we cannot analyse.’ Testing the thesis, quite literally, is Jessie Buckley’s Anna, who takes a job at a ‘Love Institute’, unbeknownst to her boyfriend, Ryan (Jeremy Allen White). There she meets fellow tester Amir (Riz Ahmed), who makes her wonder if her positive result with Ryan was accurate. Fingernails isn’t set in a specific year - ‘Maybe at the end of the 90s… We don’t know exactly when, but it’s timeless’ - and Nikou namechecks The Truman Show and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as touchpoints of conceptual stories that are very grounded, rather than futuristic or distant. Anna and Amir get to know each other when he mentors her at the institute, as they go through (often funny, often surreal) exercises with couples ahead of their tests. While you might predict that two actors as individually electric as Buckley and Ahmed would have great chemistry, it’s still a leap of faith. ‘I just followed my instincts on that, to be honest,’ says Nikou, who didn’t screen-test them. ‘But I really felt that they would have amazing chemistry. When I approached both of them separately, they both told me that they were looking for years to make a project together.’ During their first meeting at Cannes, where the film package was sold, ‘We all felt the chemistry [between them] already,’ says Nikou. As for the title, that refers to the ultimate test itself, in which a fingernail is extracted from each lover and run through a machine to determine the match. Initially, co-writer Sam Steiner had suggested extracting something from the participants’ hearts, which they quickly realised would be unworkable. ‘I started thinking that somehow the extension of our hearts are our cell phones,’ says Nikou. ‘I always wanted to connect this story a little bit with our fingers, because, in order to find love, people are swiping right and left on dating apps. And then we found this scientific fact that when you have a problem with your heart, there are small white spots on your nails.’ It’s a wince-inducing aspect of a film that’s otherwise understated and gently moving. ‘I mean, you have to feel a little bit hurt in order to feel love,’ concludes Nikou. ‘Because I think that love hurts when it’s real.’ MATT MAYTUM FINGERNAILS IS IN SELECT CINEMAS AND ON APPLE TV+ FROM 3 NOVEMBER. LOVE SCIENCES FINGERNAILS Jessie Buckley and Riz Ahmed are put to the test in an intriguing sci-fi love story. ‘You have to feel a little bit hurt in order to feel love’ CHRISTOS NIKOU APPLE TV+ The writing’s on the wall for Anna… Meet-cuticle? Stars Jessie Buckley and Riz Ahmed TOTALFILM.COM NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 15

Talk to Me’s Mia (Sophie Wilde) settles in for another fantastic horror film GETTY T his spooky season is tinged with a little sadness: just a few weeks ago, William Friedkin passed away at age 87, shortly before his final film premiered. But while The French Connection won him Best Picture and Director Oscars, arguably his best and best-known film is 1973’s The Exorcist. However, Friedkin rejected its ‘horror’ label at first, saying, ‘I never intended The Exorcist to be a horror film.’ He isn’t alone in being wary of accepting the ‘horror’ label. Jordan Peele insisted that Get Out was a ‘social thriller’, and Julia Ducournau said her cannibal coming-of-ager Raw was not a horror film as ‘I did not write this movie to scare people’. !ÌEJ¼ A=@ star Bruce Campbell once told me: ‘When I started out there, horror was just above porno.’ While we’ve progressed beyond horror being sex-work adjacent, it still doesn’t get the respect it deserves. Around the time The Babadook premiered in 2014, the label ‘elevated horror’ emerged – one of the most passive-aggressive terms imaginable, used to describe the likes of Hereditary, It Follows, Saint Maud and The Witch. Even though these films were brilliant and bold horror films, a caveat had to be used to acknowledge the genre’s value. This wasn’t ‘horror horror’ but something more sophisticated, and heaven forbid they use the art form of cinema to do something so base as to try to scare people! LEILA WILL BE BACK NEXT ISSUE. FOR FURTHER MUSINGS AND MISSIVES FOLLOW @LEILA_LATIF ON TWITTER. THIS MONTH How filmmakers are finally embracing horror As a result, the past decade has seen many pale imitations of the ‘elevated horror’ trend, with films so caught up in messaging and intergenerational-trauma metaphors they felt like dramas tangibly embarrassed to throw in a scare lest they be labelled as ‘torture porn’. They were films that forgot torturing your characters does not necessarily mean torturing your audience. And now, the genre seems to be shaking loose that embarrassment, and new, gnarly filmmakers are making their mark. Speak No Evil director Christian Tafdrup brazenly embraced the label that so many had previously rejected and said he intended to make the ‘most unpleasant experience ever’ (mission accomplished). With Evil Dead Rise and Talk to Me being adored by audiences and critics, it is an utterly thrilling prospect to consider a pivot away from ‘good taste’ and a pivot into gorgeously grisly cinema. We also talk often about the movies that ‘save cinemas’ – your Top Guns and Barbenheimers – and keep the industry profitable. But horror films regularly perform near-miraculous returns on investment with budgets that wouldn’t cover many films’ catering costs. Yet no one is crediting Evil Dead Rise’s Lee Cronin for saving the movie-going experience. When it comes to actually going to the cinema, horror’s impact is also underserved. Sure, big explosions are more successful when the seat shudders, but what is more intense than being trapped in a pitch-black room, unable to escape your worst nightmare? One of the most visceral and cinematic experiences I’ve ever had was taking a then-boyfriend to see The Descent. As the characters were unable to escape subterranean predators, I found myself wrapping my arms around my eyes, holding my breath until I felt dizzy and audibly committing to never going near a cave again. Upon reflection, he was even more scared than I was, and the break-up that followed a few weeks later was probably down to a brilliantly brutal experience that meant leaving an underwhelming relationship didn’t seem so scary. So for Halloween, and for every day, every month and every year in the future, it’s time to kill the idea that horror movies are lesser. It’s time to disembowel the notion, hack it to pieces in a cabin in the woods and hang around for a few minutes to shoot it in the head and guarantee it’s really, finally dead. Contributing editor LEILA LATIF has something to say… 16 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023 SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

Sandra (Sandra Hüller) stands accused of her husband’s murder EXCLUSIVE I know that Justine [Triet, director] watched every courtroom drama on this planet,’ says celebrated German actress Sandra Hüller of Anatomy of a Fall, a coolly intelligent and forensically detailed addition to the genre. In May it went before the jury of the Cannes Film Festival. It won the Palme d’Or. ‘So she knows the traps. She knew what she wanted to avoid.’ Like Alice Diop’s Saint Omer, Anatomy of a Fall avoids cliches. In place of grandstanding speeches and lastminute reveals, we have Hüller’s calm, complex performance as Sandra, a successful author, German by birth, who lives in the French Alps with her husband Samuel (Samuel Theis) and their son, Daniel (Milo Machado Graner). Or at least she did. Then one day Daniel returns home from a walk to find his father dead with a head wound. His cries awaken Sandra and pitch her into the nightmare of being the prime suspect in a murder trial. Ambiguity is key. Daniel is blind but also the key witness, with both the prosecution and defence reliant on what he heard. And not even Hüller had all of the facts at her disposal… ‘I panicked a few days before shooting, and I asked Justine if Sandra was guilty or not,’ says the actor, who became an international sensation with her performance in Toni Erdmann and can next be seen playing ‘the Queen of Auschwitz’ in Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest. ‘Justine avoided answering that question. And then I realised it doesn’t matter to me as she believes she’s not guilty.’ Hüller worked with Triet previously on Sibyl (2019), and here relished taking to the witness stand to speak in French and English (‘When I’m working in German I tend to be too precise, and I’m bored by myself’). She also appreciated that the film digs into the artistic process given that Sandra is a writer, and examines the unknowability of people. ‘Did I recognise the fighting for the time to do what we do? Yeah. The misunderstandings? Yeah. You always need a space where you can work. And it’s a private space. For example, when I go off to shoot for two months, that doesn’t mean I have time for myself. To explain to other people is hard. I was not relaxing. It was time for the team, the project.’ And does she agree that we all have our private spaces that we don’t reveal to anyone? ‘Yes, and isn’t it great? I find that thought really soothing. It means I don’t even have to try to find out everything – they will tell me what is meant for me. There’s a space between two people, or more when you’re a family. The space is private. That’s a good thing.’ JAMIE GRAHAM ANATOMY OF A FALL OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 10 NOVEMBER. HÜLLER CORNER ANATOMY OF A FALL Sandra Hüller fights for her life in a quality courtroom drama… ‘She believes she’s not guilty’ PICTUREHOUSE ENTERTAINMENT SANDRA HÜLLER The author’s relationship with her family comes under close scrutiny TOTALFILM.COM NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 17

EXCLUSIVE JAMES PARDON, SKY George (Paapa Essiedu), with Lukas Loughran as Erik Eriksen AKA The Dane (below) T he Lazarus Project, named after Jesus’s pal who was raised from the dead, is an apt title for a show that faced a pandemic, a fiercely competitive media landscape, and now returns while striking TV writers and actors fight to stop the medium’s own armageddon. For the uninitiated, Joe Barton’s show presented George (Paapa Essiedu) joining the Lazarus Project – a secret group who can turn back time six months whenever the apocalypse is nigh. Series 1 featured betrayals-a-plenty, which put the fate of the world at stake. Now Barton and Essiedu speak to Teasers about what lies in store for Series 2. How does George continue to navigate his unusual circumstances as the show returns? Paapa Essiedu: George always enters these situations with his eyes open, and he emotionally feels the time loops. It means we see an emotional journey. With another character or genre show, it could be much colder. How does that change with the time loops now going from six months to three weeks? Joe Barton (creator): People speaking about the first series often referenced Groundhog Day because it’s the most famous time loop, but The Lazarus Project was a much more linear story about George’s moral journey. But now they’re stuck in this loop, so it starts off much more Groundhog Day and explores that effect on the character’s psychologies. But as the series goes on, it becomes much more of a time-travel show, and by the end, it’s even bigger. You made the first series when the world felt pretty apocalyptic. How was it making Series 2 without that? PE: Joe’s got quite a scary aspect to his writing, where pretty much anything bad that he writes [about] ends up happening in real life [laughs]. The first series we were in peak lockdown. With the masks, people I thought were 28, I found out, after six weeks working together, were in their 50s! So as a collective, we were buoyed by the new intimacy and freedoms we now had. JB: It was nice of them to give us another series! This one was pandemicfree but ironically, time was our biggest enemy. It was a very quick turnaround – they announced we’d got a second series and [then just] two months later was the first day of shooting. We left on such a great cliffhanger. Does Series 2 do the same? JB: I don’t think it ends on a cliffhanger. It ends on a question mark, perhaps? What do you think, Paapa? PE: People are definitely hanging off a cliff! Are you kidding me? Joe’s been ambitious with Series 2, and in the final episodes, he leaves the audience guessing, and left us actors guessing, but provides a final beat that felt so satisfying. LEILA LATIF THE LAZARUS PROJECT S2 AIRS ON SKY MAX AND STREAMS ON NOW THIS NOVEMBER. EXTINCTION EVENTS THE LAZARUS PROJECT S2 Paapa Essiedu returns for more end-of-days, time-loop drama… ‘It becomes much more of a timetravel show’ JOE BARTON 18 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023 SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

The month in dialogue and digits. alogue and digits. TOTALFILM.COM NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 19 DEAR JOHN John Carpenter is directing again! Sort of. He’s helmed an ep of John Carpenter’s Suburban Screams, an unscripted horror anthology on Peacock in the States. PRIME AND PUNISHMENT Want to watch Prime Video without ads? In ‘early 2024’ you’ll have to pay an extra fee – on top of the subscription – for the honour. ‘The character is the star. You’re there, but you don’t feel the burden of it.’ CHRIS EVANS AGREES WITH QUENTIN TARANTINO: THE STARS OF MARVEL MOVIES ARE THE CHARACTERS. ‘I SORT OF AM RETIRED NOW… I AM BLOODY 90.’ MICHAEL CAINE SAYS THE GREAT ESCAPER IS HIS FINAL FILM. ‘ THE Y CA N TA K E W H AT YOU DID, BATM A N OR W H ATE V ER , A ND CULTUR A LLY MISA PPROPR I ATE IT… I’M IN QUIE T R E VOLT AG A INST A LL THIS.’ TIM BURTON WASN’T HAPPY TO SEE HIS CAPED CRUSADER POP UP IN THE FLASH. ‘I met a witch, who said she could help me get it made.’ ACTOR AND SUMMER OF SAM CO-WRITER MICHAEL IMPERIOLI ADOPTED UNUSUAL METHODS TO GET THE MOVIE GREENLIT. THE NUMBER OF YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS THAT DAVID GOYER’S UNMADE ‘SCRIPTMENT’ FOR AN ORIGIN-OF-THE-JEDI STORY WAS SET. ‘STOP YELLING AT ME! WE JUST STOPPED DOING IT BECAUSE IRON MAN DIED.’ GWYNETH PALTROW IS FED UP OF BEING ASKED ABOUT PEPPER POTTS. 25,000 THE NUMBER OF DAYS THAT WGA MEMBERS WERE ON STRIKE BEFORE REACHING A TENTATIVE DEAL WITH STUDIOS IN LATE SEPTEMBER. 146 ‘I SORT OF T THE MOVIE GREENLIT. T T LATE SEPTEMBER. GETTY

George MacKay plays homophobic thug Preston Nathan-StewartJarrett donned drag for his role as Jules EXCLUSIVE S ubjected to a homophobic attack, drag artist Jules (Nathan StewartJarrett) exacts a unique revenge when he chances upon his tormentor Preston (George MacKay) in Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping’s London-set Femme. Speaking at the Berlin Film Festival before the SAG strike, MacKay (1917) and Stewart-Jarrett (Candyman) tell Teasers about one of the year’s most thought-provoking thrillers… Femme is a powerful watch. What was it like to make? George MacKay: It was really emotional but thrilling. There was a real energy. It was a very young crew, as well. And the whole film, the volume is turned up to 11. And it’s also very real, and we didn’t have a huge amount of time to make it. So we just threw ourselves at it. The whole thing was a sprint in a really thrilling way. After Jules is beaten by George’s character, Preston, he undertakes risky revenge. Why? Nathan Stewart-Jarrett: Jules wants to take something back. There’s something taken from him. And he does it in such a way that doesn’t bring him happiness. I don’t think I believe in revenge. I think I believe it in theory, but actually, I wouldn’t end up doing it. What was it like becoming Preston? GM: I’m not particularly aggressive in my day-to-day… so it was like having a big shout. You know when you just roar, and it actually feels really good? I couldn’t really feel like him until I had my hair shaved, until I wore the costume, until I had the jewellery. How was it playing in drag? NS-J: It was very painful [in heels] – my feet hurt! There was a point where I was like, ‘I can’t take them off because if I take them off, they’re not going back on!’ But it really, really informed who Jules was. The heels, the nails, the wig, the make-up – the movie starts with that ritual of putting on and becoming. GM: It’s about drag as much as anything and about performance and identity and creating big personas, performative personas, to then live – very realistically – inside of. And that’s what I mean, in terms of it being up to 11. For both Preston and Jules, the masculine and feminine personas that they’ve created and explore are big. What does the film say about homophobia? NS-J: It’s still everywhere. That is part of what the movie is saying… that people exist in their own worlds and are very safe in those worlds. On the football terraces, a gay bar, a sauna, wherever that would be. But they step outside of those worlds, that context, and there are dangers. And I think London, arguably, is one of the most progressive cities in the world, but it’s still very dangerous for certain people at certain times. JAMES MOTTRAM FEMME IS IN CINEMAS ON 1 DECEMBER. HEEL TURN FEMME George MacKay and Nathan StewartJarrett discover revenge is a dish best served bold… ‘London is still very dangerous for certain people at certain times’ NATHAN STEWARTJARRETT SIGNATURE ENTERTAINMENT 20 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023 SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

NEXT BIG THINGP lucked from high school to star in Clio Barnard’s The Selfish Giant, Bradford lad Shaun Thomas has since appeared alongside Sacha Baron Cohen and Mark Strong in Grimsby, and Eva Green and Samuel L. Jackson in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Now 26, Thomas is winning rave reviews for ITV1 drama The Long Shadow, about the five-year manhunt for serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, and Canneswinning drama How to Have Sex. Badger, in How to Have Sex, is an interesting character… He’s fun and outgoing. But on the flipside, he’s emotionally intelligent – aware of his surroundings and the effect that words and actions can have on others. He’s quite SHAUN THOMAS IS ALL GROWN UP families had to suffer because of a despicable predator. They’ve done an amazing job with The Long Shadow. It’s not through the eyes of the media. It’s not through the eyes of the police. It’s a voice for the victims. So, how do you plan to follow these two triumphs? I’ve got exciting stuff coming up, but I can’t speak on anything yet. And once I establish myself wholly as an actor, I want to go on to write and direct my own things, and tell my own stories, from my own experiences. JAMIE GRAHAM THE LONG SHADOW IS ON ITVX NOW. HOW TO HAVE SEX OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 3 NOVEMBER. a heartfelt person, but likes to take risks. I think he gets caught in the trap of wanting to be liked. How was it going to Cannes with the film and winning the Un Certain Regard award? Like, ‘Whoa!’ But when I first read the script, I could sense there was something really special. It was always going to open people’s eyes and get attention. When I was 15 years old, I went to Cannes with The Selfish Giant. But to go back at 26 and experience it as an adult, to indulge in the atmosphere… It’s been a blessing. The Long Shadow is excellent. Did you hear much about the case when you were growing up in Yorkshire? The stories and rumours were always lurking around. I’d always known that women and TOTALFILM.COM NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 21 JOSEPH SINCLAIR

EXCLUSIVE STAR POWER WISH Disney marks its centenary with a feature honouring its heritage… DISNEY T here are few of us now who would’ve been alive before Disney, and a lot of us grew up with it,’ says Jennifer Lee, the chief creative officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS). She is also one of the directors of Frozen, and screenwriter on upcoming feature, Wish, which opens in the studio’s centenary year. It’s an original new musical, with an art style and Easter eggs galore that hark back to Walt’s heyday. ‘In the beginning, I remember someone saying, “Good luck! This is ambitious, but good luck.”’ But that spirit of persevering in the face of a challenge dovetails neatly with the theme of Wish. A wish is ‘a declaration of, “I’m going to try,”’ says Lee. THE G.O.A.T. It wouldn’t be classic Disney without a cute animal sidekick, and Wish has Valentino the goat (voiced by Alan Tudyk, who’s been something of a good luck charm in recent WDAS movies). ‘He’s kind of the family goat, but it’s really Asha’s goat,’ explains Buck. ‘So Valentino will be with her the entire way.’ He’ll also act as a metaphorical stand-in for one of the film’s biggest themes, given how much goats love to scale mountains. ‘You can reach the peak, and that’s fine. But really, the more important thing is the climbing.’ From the message, to the characters, to the art style, Wish is all about classic Disney. ‘Even just the concept of wishing is something that celebrates our 100th anniversary,’ says Buck. ‘And we’ve all been inspired by the spirit of Walt, and what he’s done with the studio as an artist,’ adds Veerasunthorn. ‘We feel like we’re in a position to [honour that].’ SOLAR FLAIR Set in the kingdom of Rosas, Wish sees its young protagonist Asha follow in the Disney tradition of seeking celestial help, only for an actual anthropomorphised star - named, um, Star - to fall from the sky and into her life. ‘Star’s this little ball of energy,’ says director Chris Buck (who co-directed the Frozen films with Jennifer Lee). ‘Star doesn’t talk. It’s all going to be pantomime animation, which, for me, is just kind of animation gold, because I started as a hand-drawn animator, and always loved it when we were able to do pantomime. Star is there to help Asha, but… Asha still has to do a lot of work to make her wish come true.’ ‘It’s not the way you’d expect,’ adds fellow director Fawn Veerasunthorn. ‘It’s so chaotic.’ 22 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023 SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

ART AND SOUL Honouring the studio’s heritage, the team harked back to the concept art for early Disney films for animation inspiration. Wish is CG animation with a watercolour texture (one of several toons prodding the boundaries of the form this year). ‘It almost, in a weird way, feels like you’re going to simpler times where things were hand-drawn,’ laughs Lee. ‘But those weren’t simple times!’ Buck says you get the feeling of handdrawn ‘even though you realise this probably isn’t hand-drawn because of all the detail that we can get in there’. ‘Really, it’s continuing to find ways that we can keep making the hand-drawn [animation] that we love work with the technology that we have,’ says Lee. BRIMFUL OF ASHA Voicing the protagonist - who’s referred to as ‘a sharpwitted idealist’ - is West Side Story Oscar-winner Ariana DeBose. ‘I already knew she was kind of a powerhouse,’ says Buck. ‘Her energy, obviously her talent when it comes to the singing, the voice – just everything was right. I think we offered her the part right before West Side Story came out.’ ‘And she brings so much of herself to this film, to the character – her youthful energy, and her being real about things,’ says Veerasunthorn. ‘She’s not too precious. We really like that.’ MATT MAYTUM WISH OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 24 NOVEMBER. FIT FOR A KING Chris Pine voices Wish’s villain, King Magnifico. But you need a special bad guy when you’re standing in the shadow of Disney’s legacy. ‘What was important was: “How do we make him different? How do we make him his own?”’ explains Lee. ‘So what you really get to watch is the journey of the sort of heroic figure, and his descension, and watching the choices he makes along the way.’ For Lee, an understanding of those choices - over a straightforward bad-to-the-bone character - was key. ‘I think that’s a big part of where storytelling has evolved: the motivation behind it matters to people, in a way that we may have not needed in the past.’ She also confirms that Pine will show off his pipes in his own musical number. EASTER-EGG Within the world of Rosas, there are going to be Easter eggs everywhere, from an overt nod to the seven dwarfs, to much more besides. ‘[Our artists will] add things in the backgrounds,’ says Buck. ‘They’ll add things to characters – whatever they do or however they move. Whatever it is, we’ve encouraged our artists to really play with this one.’ ‘A lot of people who work at Disney are Disney nerds themselves,’ laughs Veerasunthorn. ‘But the level of their knowledge… Sometimes I’m like, “Which one is this one?” They’re at the next level. I respect that.’ TOTALFILM.COM NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 23

FESTIVAL ROUND-UP LEGENDS OF THE FALL VENICE & TIFF Five essential films from this year’s fall festival season. FERRARI One of the few films that had strike agreements for its cast to attend the Lido, Michael Mann’s study of the titular Italian racing-car designer at a business/ personal crossroads in 1957 boasted Adam Driver bringing his House of Gucci accent back, hot-rod road battles and a horrific crash scene. Like Ferrari’s motors, the production is sleek, expensivelooking and runs handsomely. But Mann’s film takes time to run the tyres in, only really reaching top gear in its second half, and it lacks a certain something under the hood to really make it fly. MAESTRO Nose-gate aside, Bradley Cooper’s portrait of the marriage between Leonard Bernstein (Cooper) and Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan) over four decades is pure awards bait. Venice was the gongs starting point for Tár last year and it’s likely Cooper’s shifting ratio, stagey, long-takes, vivid love letter to music and soulmates will follow a similar tempo. Worth seeing for a masterclass scene set in a Manhattan apartment at Thanksgiving alone; a verbal opera as melodic as any of Bernstein’s works and showcasing two performers at their very best. Encore! WOMAN OF THE HOUR One of several films by an actor-turned-director at TIFF, Anna Kendrick’s debut was snapped up by Netflix. Don’t be fooled by the kooky premise, based on the true story of a serial killer who appeared on The Dating Game (the US Blind Date) in the 70s - while not without fun moments, this tense true-crimer spotlights various different ways in which women must negotiate male toxicity. Kendrick also stars as ‘bachelorette’ Cheryl Bradshaw, while Daniel Zovatto chills as prolific predator Rodney Alcala. Avoid reading up on the real story until you’ve seen it. THE BOY AND THE HERON Hayao Miyazaki’s final feature (well, maybe) was a runnerup for TIFF’s coveted People’s Choice award. The Studio Ghibli animation is very much in keeping with their classic themes: here, 12-year-old Mahito moves to the countryside after the death of his mother during the Pacific War. There he meets the titular bird, who directs him towards a fantasy realm that promises a maternal reunion. That there are autobiographical elements only make it all the more poignant as a (possible) Miyazaki swansong. JANE CROWTHER/MATT MAYTUM HIT MAN Richard Linklater’s out-ofcompetition romcom with murder was the audience-pleaser Venice delegates didn’t know they needed, and confirmed the star wattage of lead Glen Powell. Frothy, smart, witty and sexy, the zingy script co-written by Linklater and Powell provided psychological and philosophical musings alongside daft disguises and romantic entanglements that played like a 90s gem. One of four hitman films to hit the fest (Fincher’s The Killer, Korine’s Aggro Dr1Ft, Lorenz’s In the Land of Saints and Sinners), Linklater’s is the movie that truly slayed. B L A C K B E A R , E LY S I A N F I L M G R O U P, N E T F L I X 24 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023 SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

Oliver Jackson-Cohen reunites with Jenna Coleman to play army veteran Jackdaw EXCLUSIVE W hen Jamie Childs looks out the window of his house on the Hartlepool Headland, he can see most of the locations that he used in his feature debut, Jackdaw. The wind turbines out to sea. A steelworks. The oil refineries on the road to Seaham that gave Ridley Scott visual impetus for Blade Runner’s LA skyscapes… ‘The refineries are basically these big Christmas trees of lights and fireballs,’ he smiles. ‘They lit the car chase for us. Jackdaw is a relatively low-budget film so I tried to make something that looked more expensive than it was.’ Jackdaw looks good. It looks great. Though set in the northern rustbelt, it has no interest in social realism, instead offering mythical landscapes, strippeddown action, and dialogue and characters reduced to an essence. At its centre is former motocross champion and army veteran Jackdaw (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), returned to his hometown to look after his younger brother. Broke, he agrees to do an openwater pick-up of an illegal package, but is double-crossed, his brother kidnapped. Bad mistake: Jackdaw is the archetypal avenger of many westerns and thrillers, and he’s now after not just his brother, but blood. ‘I love spaghetti westerns, and Ollie does have that Clint Eastwood thing,’ nods Childs. ‘Jackdaw is a kind of neo-western, really. It’s got guys on horses shooting guns. And I was trying to create an enigmatic character.’ He didn’t have much time to create anything, which only makes his streamlined thriller all the more impressive. Approached in August 2022, Childs was asked to write and shoot a genre piece by Christmas. He did just that, using the experience gained from making shorts and high-end genre TV (The Sandman, His Dark Materials) to go at the 23-day shoot ‘all guns blazing’. Also flaming bright is a supporting cast that includes Thomas Turgoose, Allan Mustafa, Rory McCann, Vivienne Acheampong and Jenna Coleman, the last of whom also acts alongside Jackson-Cohen in Prime Video series Wilderness. But it’s the look and vibe that’s the thing. Childs wears his references on his blood-flecked sleeve, namechecking Mad Max and Akira before zooming in on his primary influences. ‘My references were Walter Hill survive-the-night movies like Streets of Fire or The Warriors, and John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 and Escape from New York,’ he says. ‘So I was trying to create this sort of fictional world. Nobody really does [these kinds of movies in Britain]. And I can understand why. Seeing how they’re trying to advertise the film now, they don’t really get it! I guess it’s quite niche.’ Who wants cookie-cutter cinema? Niche is good. Jackdaw is very good. Get on it. JAMIE GRAHAM JACKDAW OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 26 JANUARY 2024. NIGHT VISION JACKDAW Jamie Childs turns to a nocturnal life of crime for a super-sleek feature debut. ‘I was trying to create an enigmatic character’ VERTIGO RELEASING JAMIE CHILDS Jackdaw heads to the streets in a bid to find his brother – and take revenge TOTALFILM.COM NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 25

That’s why, in the universe of Rebel Moon, griffin-riding musclemen, humanoid spider-creatures and centuriesold robot knights with the voice of Anthony Hopkins can comfortably coexist. They’re all part of the, ahem, rebel alliance assembled by Sofia Boutella’s Kora to fight back when Imperium forces land on the titular moon of Veldt and requisition their next harvest. Kora knows the risk of defying the Mother World’s authority better than anyone – she’s a former Imperium soldier in hiding, and seeking redemption. ‘Kora lives in a grey area. I mean, she’s had such a complicated life. She’s had such guilt that she’s carrying around,’ says Snyder. ‘Thematically, it’s about forgiveness, and it’s about finding the strength to move on, and finding something to fight for.’ In Snyder’s words, the scale of Rebel Moon is ‘enormous’, eclipsing even the pair’s contentious work on the expansive DCEU, and packed with enough story to fill two movies. Part Hg^3y:<abe]h_?bk^ will land in December while IZkmMph3Ma^ L\Zk`bo^k will drop just four months later in April, after both films were shot and edited simultaneously. ‘We have the hugest style guide… three languages that we created, all this information,’ Deborah Snyder smiles. ‘Every character, every costume, every place didn’t exist. We had to create it. And, in creating it, it was also like, “OK, what is their government? What is their belief system?” It’s a lot more questions that we had to ask ourselves.’ Co-starring Charlie Hunnam, Michiel Huisman, Djimon Hounsou, Bae Doona, Ray Fisher, Jena Malone and Ed Skrein, in classic Snyder fashion the director is already working on R-rated director’s cuts of each film that will offer deeper character beats and even more gloriously violent speedramped action. ‘The difference [this time] is that we’ve planned for it… it’s not an afterthought,’ Snyder notes. ‘We’re still tweaking, but they’ll probably be 45-minutes to an hour longer, each one. You get more character. You get a lot more of everything. It’s not just a few deleted scenes.’ JORDAN FARLEY REBEL MOON – PART ONE: A CHILD OF FIRE STREAMS ON NETFLIX FROM 22 DECEMBER. Farmer Gunnar (Michiel Huisman) joins Kora in her fight Charlie Hunnam is mercenary pilot Kai, hired by Kora Jena Malone plays Harmada, a humanoid spider warrior The story echoes The Magnificent Seven, as Kora fights to save a community from the Imperium EXCLUSIVE NEW WORLD DISORDER REBEL MOON – PART ONE: A CHILD OF FIRE Zack Snyder returns with a two-part sci-fi epic. I f you know anything about Rebel Moon, it’s probably that over a decade ago the idea for the film was the basis of Zack Snyder’s pitch for a Star Wars spin-off – Seven Samurai with lightsabers, essentially. Now retooled as a rare example of original, galactic-scale sci-fi worldbuilding for Netflix, Rebel Moon couldn’t be further from a galaxy far, far away. ‘Tonally, it’s just a different thing,’ says producer Deborah Snyder. ‘I always felt like he was going to be contained in a box [with Star Wars]. We got to create our own canon, and create our own rules.’ 26 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023 SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS ‘It’s about finding the strength to move on, and finding something to fight for ’ ZACK SNYDER

NETFLIX Ed Skrein plays the Imperium Admiral Atticus Noble Sofia Boutella stars as Kora, a soldier seeking redemption for her past TOTALFILM.COM NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 27

20TH CENTURY STUDIOS/DISNEY CAN WE TALK ABOUT? The Creator isn’t my favourite film of the year, but it is the 2023 film I’m most glad exists. Gareth Edwards’ tremendous, soulful, sentimental sci-fi about a frighteningly plausible AI future features exquisite world-building, punchy set-pieces, ever-topical commentary on American imperialism, thoughtful musings on the nature of humanity, a compelling emotional throughline… but, most importantly, it’s a too-rare example of original big-swing, big-screen filmmaking. For anyone who has fond memories of a time before they heard the term ‘intellectual property’, The Creator feels like a throwback in the best possible way. I’d almost forgotten the thrill of entering an imaginative, thoroughly realised new world with zero pre-conceived notions of what to expect. Sure, there are that builds ahead of the village assault, when something unseen starts steamrolling the tree line, and the near-limitless potential for what monstrously efficient murder machine is about to emerge now. That the film also definitively and satisfyingly ends, with no sequel-baiting loose ends or unresolved plot threads, feels like a sad exception for films at this level. Why there aren’t more films like The Creator should be obvious from one glance at the box-office charts – they scarcely register in a sea of sequels, adaptations and franchise extensions (Elemental stands alone in the top 10 this year). And the risk post-strike is that studios are going to be doubling down on safe bets to cover their losses. But with audience tolerance for low-hanging fruit IP filmmaking at an all-time nadir, now is the perfect time to take audiences to brave new worlds. still joys to be had from the Marvel-model of comfort viewing, where everything is the same but different, or seeing a great filmmaker achieve something special with existing material. But wholly new experiences were a staple of my cinema-going diet growing up, and I’ve been severely malnourished for too long. Few things will stick with me more from this year than The Creator’s NOMAD – a low-orbit space station that hovers menacingly over the New Asia landscape – emitting cold, blue targeting beams before raining death from above. Or the anticipation ‘THE CREATOR FEELS LIKE A THROWBACK IN THE BEST POSSIBLE WAY’ THE CREATOR AND THE JOYS OF ORIGINAL MOVIEMAKING Isn’t it just so nice to see something we haven’t seen before? S P O I L E R ALERT! 28 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023 SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS JORDAN FARLEY @JORDANFARLEY and satisfyingly en loose ends or unre like a sad exception Why there aren Creator sho glance a – they sequels extens in the risk pos going to bets to co audience toler IP filmmakin now is the audiences model of the same aker ng t e WAY’ SU

5 THINGS DISNEY+ 1 PLOTTING THE HEIST ‘Heist thrillers end when the culprits have succeeded or failed,’ reckons Stephen Garrett. ‘They’re either dead or disappear into the sunset.’ Disney+ eight-parter Culprits, exec-produced by Garrett and created by writer-director J Blakeson (I Care a Lot), follows Joe Petrus (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), aka Muscle, over three timelines: signing up for, pulling off and, for the majority, reckoning with the consequences of raiding a bank vault when his fellow thieves are targeted, one by one, by a killer three years on. ‘This was full of “what ifs”,’ enthuses Blakeson. ‘What would you do if you had a huge amount of money? If you could have any life you wanted, what would you choose?’ 2 PICKING THE MAIN MAN ‘Joe is the guy who has two lines, then gets killed in episode two – if he’s lucky,’ laughs Garrett. ‘He’s normally invisible for so many different reasons.’ Stewart-Jarrett brought versatility to a role that required him to adopt different personas in different timelines. ‘I’ve seen Nathan in lots of things, but never seen him do this,’ adds Blakeson. ‘He has a soulfulness, as well as the Griffin Dunne in After Hours quality of, “What the fuck?!”, because in every episode Joe’s having a very intense day!’ 3 PULLING THE CREW TOGETHER Joe’s co-conspirators include Officer (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), Psycho (Niamh Algar) and Gemma Arterton’s criminal mastermind, Dianne Harewood. ‘I’d worked with Gemma near the start of our careers in The Disappearance of Alice Creed,’ says Blakeson. ‘It was a joy to work with her again. Look at Ocean’s Eleven and it’s pretty much a bunch of white guys in their 30s and 40s – we only have one of those and he’s not a main character, so for me, it was about subverting assumptions.’ 4 SCATTERING AROUND THE GLOBE ‘Our first day of filming was in the Toronto suburbs,’ Garrett recalls. ‘It was cold, wet and crack-den central – the most depressing place on the planet to begin!’ After this inauspicious start, the shoot moved on to Spain, the UK and Norway. ‘If these people could run to the four corners of the globe, you’ve got to show the four corners of the globe,’ shrugs Blakeson. ‘They can’t just run to the four corners of Yorkshire.’ 5 GETTING AWAY WITH IT Delivering high-octane action, smart dialogue and sinuous plotting, Culprits has rewarded the efforts of its creators. ‘I’ve really never come across a writer like J in his attention to detail,’ adds Garrett. ‘It’s a nightmare to have to produce and facilitate, but there’s a whoop of joy when you finally see it all come together.’ ‘Kind of like pulling off a heist!’ Blakeson grins. GABRIEL TATE CULPRITS STREAMS ON DISNEY+ FROM 8 NOVEMBER. REINVENTING THE STEAL CULPRITS NATHAN STEWART-JARRETT LEADS A HEIST THRILLER – BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT ‘Our first day of filming was cold, wet and crack-den central’ STEPHEN GARRETT Gemma Arterton as crime boss Dianne, with Karl Collins as Fixer. (Inset, above) Nathan StewartJarrett in the main role of Joe TOTALFILM.COM NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 29

The Adams Family write, star in and direct their films, including latest Where the Devil Roams EXCLUSIVE I t’s the balance of fun and danger, and a little bit of seediness as well,’ says Toby Poser when asked about the enduring appeal of carnivals. ‘I like the seedy carnivals. John and I got engaged at Coney Island.’ John Adams grins. ‘The county fair where we’re from [the Catskills] is super-big, but it’s also super-dirty and the characters working it are super-shifty, but wonderful. That’s great soil for a storyteller.’ Indeed it is, as evidenced by the likes of Freaks, Something Wicked This Way Comes and Nightmare Alley. And now the Adams Family – husband and wife John Adams and Poser, along with daughters Zelda and Lulu Adams – are peddling an eye-widening attraction, Where the Devil Roams. Set in 30s America, it tracks the Axon Family (Poser, John Adams and Zulu Adams), sideshow performers travelling on the dying carnival circuit. Teasers is not about to offer a peek until you pay your entry fee, but we promise home invasions, serial killings and black magic galore. Deliriously idiosyncratic and rhapsodically hand-crafted (the Adams Family write, direct, shoot, edit and score all of their movies, as well as performing), Where the Devil Roams is hard to categorise. ‘A dark morality play?’ ponders John. ‘A dark poem – there’s a lot of [actual] poetry in it, and there’s spirituality weaved into the storyline,’ says Zelda. ‘For me, it’s its own little theatre piece within a film piece,’ muses Poser. Teasers, meanwhile, suggest it’s also a musical, of sorts, with killer tunes provided by the Adams Family’s grungy lo-fi metal band, H6LLB6ND6R. John nods. ‘We think of all of our films as musicals. I don’t like musicals, but we laugh that we secretly make musicals!’ Shot in muted colours with stretches of monochrome that actually look like a 30s picture, Where the Devil Roams is as beautiful as it is grisly, and oddly touching. It’s also contains, if you desire it, social commentary on today’s broken America. But here’s the big question: do the Adams Family pour their own lives into their work? This and their two previous films are about families. ‘We make documentaries,’ laughs John. ‘The Deeper You Dig was our first foray into horror, and it was our worry about this kid [indicates Zelda] getting hurt, or losing her. Then Hellbender was about her turning into a woman. This one, she wanted to make a movie that was more reflective of her looking at her parents. It’s about us getting older, and her finding her voice.’ Zelda smiles pensively. ‘We made this film when I had one year left of high school before I went off to college,’ she nods. ‘It was one last thing we could hold on to, to throw us together a little bit longer.’ JAMIE GRAHAM WHERE THE DEVILS ROAMS IS AWAITING A RELEASE DATE. ADAMS FAMILY VALUES WHERE THE DEVIL ROAMS Roll up, roll up for Total Film’s FrightFest Best Film winner… THE ADAMS FAMILY Zelda Adams in the new 1930s-set movie 30 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023 SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

AL AMY, GETT Y, SK Y THE HEROB eing out there, and being “on”, is something that I really enjoy,’ says Robert Carlyle. A good thing, then, that in a 30-year-plus career, Carlyle has never been ‘off’, from his 1991 breakthrough in Ken Loach’s Riff-Raff, through the phenomenon of Trainspotting and beyond. Carlyle will soon return as embattled British PM Robert Sutherland in Sky Max thriller series COBRA: Rebellion. COBRA (top), The Full Monty (centre), and Trainspotting’s Begbie (left) How have you found the experience of playing the Prime Minister during such a fraught period for British politics? Well, I mean, some of the stuff that goes on in the real world, you couldn’t write it. Honestly, it’s been fantastic, but who would have thought that I’d be a Conservative Prime Minister?! I’m lucky if they let me back into Scotland at this rate. Are you drawn to political stories when reading scripts? If you can find a project that does have some kind of value like that, then that’s going to be something I’m always drawn to. The Full Monty is seen as politics-lite, but it’s actually really important to talk about those issues. It’s the opposite side of the coin to go from playing someone like Gaz to playing Robert Sutherland. Riff-Raff is also a sympathetic story about the working class. What are your memories of landing that role? The audition for that was insane. It’s the way Ken [Loach] does it. He looked for the character of Stevie in Belfast, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, and London. When You’ll be reprising Begbie for TV series The Blade Artist… This is the first time I’ve really been there, at the concept of the thing. At this stage, as Irvine [Welsh, writer] said himself, no one knows the character like me. The plan is that it’s going to be a six-part story. We have the first script but we’re not settled on it just yet. The next draft is due to come to me in a couple of weeks. What was your Bond experience like? It kind of felt like you were working for MI6! The way people appeared on set – that was extraordinary. One day, I was in a scene with Pierce Brosnan, and I noticed that this person was quite close as we were in the middle of a take. I was distracted by this. I was going to turn around and go, ‘Excuse me.’ And it’s fucking [footballer] David Seaman, standing there! Was it Danny Boyle’s connection to 28 Weeks Later that led to your involvement in that film? It was Danny that called me, in actual fact. He said, ‘Come and do this. I’m not going to be directing it.’ I was like, ‘What?’ But Danny directed most of – actually, all of – the second unit. And, in particular, the opening. Danny shot all of that. It’s a terrifying film. You went uncredited for your cameo as John Lennon in Boyle’s Yesterday – why? When Danny called me up he said, ‘I’m not going to tell you what the role is. I just want you to read the entire script.’ Most actors are like, ‘Where am I?’ [laughs] As I flipped the page, and there was John, I was in tears. That notion of seeing John again, just for a brief moment, I thought was amazing. To keep that back, and to get that surprise, I thought it was definitely worth it. JORDAN FARLEY COBRA: REBELLION IS ON SKY MAX AND NOW FROM 12 OCTOBER. I turned up, it was a central hotel in Glasgow. There were about 1,000 actors there. I thought, ‘There’s no chance.’ But Ken’s seen something in myself. Did Begbie cast a shadow on your career after Trainspotting? Obviously, I was delighted with the success of Trainspotting. But for about four or five years after that, the scripts coming through were like Begbie 1, Begbie 2, Begbie 3… I thought, ‘I can’t get stuck here.’ I was lucky that the next thing I did was The Full Monty. I was seen as an actor, rather than just someone who plays a villain. ROBERT CARLYLE THE SCOTTISH STAR ON A TOP-CLASS CAREER ‘WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT I’D BE A CONSERVATIVE PRIME MINISTER?!’ TOTALFILM.COM NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 31

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34 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023

Ridley Scott takes on Napoleon Bonaparte in his biggest and most challenging film yet. Total Film sits down with the legendary director to discuss the humongous battles, yes, but also how he got to the heart of the famed dictator and explored his complicated relationship with his wife, Joséphine. Saddle up… WORDS JAMIE GRAHAM It takes cojones the size of cannonballs to make a film based on the tumultuous life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Not only will you be following in the deep footsteps of Abel Gance’s five-and-a-half-hour Napoléon (1927) and Sergei Bondarchuk’s sevenhour War and Peace (1966/7) – two of the masterpieces of cinema – but you’re daring to tread where the great Stanley Kubrick failed. After conquering the stars with 2001: A Space Odyssey, the visionary filmmaker famously set out to make his Napoleon film. He read extensively. He scouted far-flung locations. And he cajoled the Romanian People’s Army into committing 40,000 soldiers and 10,000 cavalrymen for the battle scenes. But Kubrick, who promised ‘the best movie ever made’, was ultimately defeated, brought to his knees by the prohibitive cost of the mighty endeavour. Enter Ridley Scott. Scott, of course, mounts gargantuan productions (Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, Exodus: Gods and Kings) like they’re bread-and-butter soldiers NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 35 NAPOLEON

Special Effects Supervisor Scott collaborations: commercials, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Kingdom of Heaven, Exodus: Gods and Kings, The Martian, Alien: Covenant, Napoleon, Gladiator 2 How does Ridley convey what he needs you to create? He’s a very visual person. He draws everything. When you’re just having a chat with him, he’s doodling. His attention to detail is second to none. When you’re in a meeting with him, you have to listen to his every word, because if he says, ‘In the back of this scene there’s this little dog in the corner, and he’s nibbling an apple,’ you’ll get to the day of that shoot, and he’ll say, ‘Where’s the dog? Where’s the apple?’ It’s all in his head, the genius. He’s so prolific… He’s already thinking about two jobs in advance. And the way he switches between projects is unreal; I’m talking to him about his next one after Gladiator 2. I was in Australia on Alien: Covenant, and I said, ‘Why do you keep doing this?’ And he said, ‘Because I love it. Making movies – that’s my drug.’ What’s the biggest challenge working with him? He does these large-scale things, but he shoots them in a super-quick time. So the hardest thing is keeping up with him, because he shoots multi-cameras. The minimum he’ll have on a set is five cameras, the most 15. In those big battle scenes in Napoleon, you’ve got to get an effect in front of every one of those cameras. Ridley, very politely, doesn’t stand for slackers. When I hire a crew, I tell everybody upfront, ‘This is going to be the hardest job you’ve ever worked on.’ Gladiator 2 is even harder than Napoleon. He’s taken it to another level and he’s 85. He’s unbelievable. How is he unique? He’s very academic. I think he’s got a photographic memory as well. He’s very precise with what he wants. He’s passionate. He’s fast. I just hope he goes on forever, and keeps on making the movies that he does. I’m so surprised he’s never won an Academy Award. What can you tell us about Gladiator 2? It’s a pretty simple story, but the set-pieces are huge. It was like stepping back in time, because we built the same Colosseum again. JANE CROWTHER to be dipped in his morning eggs. Whip Napoleon into shape? No biggie. ‘I knew Stanley Kubrick,’ he tells Total Film. ‘The script was sent to me by his estate, to say: “Do you want to look at this?” But it was birth to death – the whole nine yards. Napoleon did 66 battles. You can’t do 66 battles [on screen]. So you’ve got to make some choices.’ Scott announced that he’d be turning his attention to Napoleon on 14 October 2020, the same day that The Last Duel wrapped filming. He works fast, and had begun the 62-day shoot – yes, just 62 days, ridiculous for a film of this scale – by February 2022. By then, all of the aforementioned choices were made. Gone was the childhood (‘Third-rate aristocracy without money, from Corsica,’ shrugs Scott). The film would focus on the years of 1793, when Napoleon routed the Royalist rebels in the siege of Toulon, and when Marie Antoinette was executed by guillotine, to 1821, when Napoleon died in exile on the island of St. Helena. It would stage six major battles, including, naturally, Waterloo, but the key to unlocking this unwieldy war chest was in making it a character study. The focus would be the relationship of Napoleon and Joséphine. ‘He was such a powerful man who was, without question, a dictator, and hardly benevolent – what he said, had to go,’ muses Scott. ‘And yet he was vulnerable on one side of his life to a woman. He was enchanted, blown away. I don’t think he was a particularly sexually driven kind of character. Joséphine, as a courtesan, was physically impressive, and had survived in jail. She was put in jail when her husband [Alexandre de Beauharnais, a politician and general of the French Revolution] was executed. The children were taken away from her. In jail, she learned that to avoid the guillotine, you better get pregnant. So she had to, as it were, put herself about, to find the most agreeable man she might want to bed with, and try to get pregnant. ‘The best way was finding a man who would love her, and who would pay,’ he continues. ‘She realised she had no other choice than to accept this mediocre lieutenant, who actually was on the verge of becoming a general because he had taken Toulon. He adored her, which was the beginning of his letters when he was away from her, which were almost childlike in their sexuality and their naughtiness. By the time he started to grow in stature and rank, she started ‘He was such a powerful man, and yet he was vulnerable on one side of his life to a woman. He was enchanted’ Joaquin Phoenix reunites with Ridley Scott to play Napoleon SONY 36 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023 SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS RIDLEY SCOTT

Production Designer Scott collaborations: commercials, G.I. Jane, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Kingdom of Heaven, American Gangster, Robin Hood, Prometheus, The Counsellor, Exodus: Gods and Kings, The Martian, All the Money in the World, The Last Duel, House of Gucci, Napoleon, Gladiator 2 Does Ridley still surprise you after all these years working together? He’s always surprising. That’s what keeps me around. He’s such an original thinker. His take – when you think you understand the subject, he opens the door. That’s always refreshing and inspiring. He’s the same multidimensional character, and in terms of his acuity, I met all those years ago. The challenge is to keep up with him. What was the biggest challenge he set you on Napoleon? Not to go to France! That’s too easy. That’s how he wanted to approach it, because not only is he a director, he’s also a producer. He’s a consummate professional in every way. It’s very annoying how much he knows about everybody’s department. It’s like going to film school, working with him. He has such a vast amount of experience on many, many levels – of production design, camera, post-production, of production itself. There’s nothing about making films that he isn’t really an expert about. So you’re constantly on your toes. What makes him a unique director? I’ve worked with a few other directors in my career: they talk. Ridley talks and draws. Give him a pen and a piece of paper, and he’ll do what is famously known as his Ridleygrams – on the hood of a car on location, in the middle of a desert… He’ll jot off a quick doodle, or he’ll spend more time with his coloured pens, doing quite elaborate storyboards. Scorsese does storyboards, but they’re stick figures, on a very elementary level. Ridley’s drawing skills are amazing. He’s an artist. He still paints in his free time. But he likes nothing better than to sit around a table with all of his department heads, and talk and draw and speculate. What can you tell us about Gladiator 2? We’ve gone bigger in scale with it than we did on the first one; we’re building bigger and more sets. But the standards and density of detail are the same as ever, no matter what film we’re on. Ridley’s at home on enormous scales of cosmos, but the refinement of microdetail – those standards are extremely high as well. That’s the genius of the man. Is there anything he’s not good at? Remembering names! He remembers faces but not so many names. JANE CROWTHER to pay attention. He became the Emperor of France, and she became the Empress. She’s now clearly impressed. Does she love him? I don’t know. Does she need him? Certainly. So, already, I think this story is more interesting than lots of battles.’ Scott and his team showed due diligence when it came to their deep-dive research of the man that the filmmaker calls ‘the most researched or over-researched person in history’. But between the agreed-upon facts were gaps and contradictions, meaning dots needed to be joined. Applying a bit of guesswork is not something that Scott is about to fret over. ‘The rest becomes conjecture,’ he shrugs. ‘I’ve done a lot of historical films. I find I’m reading a report of someone else’s report 100 years after the event. So I wonder, “How much do they romance and elaborate? How accurate is it?” It always amuses me when a critic says to me, “This didn’t happen in Jerusalem.” I say, “Were you there? That’s the fucking answer.”’ To play the big man – or rather the short man (though in truth, 5ft 7in wasn’t short for the time, and the Brits wickedly exaggerated Napoleon’s diminished stature) – Scott turned to Joaquin Phoenix. The pair had previously teamed on Gladiator, when Phoenix played Emperor Commodus. Scott had dangled a few things since, but Napoleon was the one that made the mercurial actor bite. Here was a role of real riches for any actor who longs for complexity. Just as Napoleon was an autocrat who instigated many liberal reforms, so contradictory elements warred within him: ambition, rampant ego, doubt, loyalty, violence, vulnerability. Jodie Comer, meanwhile, was cast as Joséphine, also a plum role full of slippery contradictions. But the Last Duel actor had to withdraw due to a schedule clash when COVID-19 forced filming dates to be rearranged. In her place came Vanessa Kirby. Vanessa Kirby plays Empress Joséphine, taking over the role when Jodie Comer dropped out TOTALFILM.COM NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 37 NAPOLEON

Each scene is meticulously storyboarded by Scott Costume Designer Scott collaborations: Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, American Gangster, Body of Lies, Robin Hood, Prometheus, The Counsellor, Exodus: Gods and Kings, The Martian, All the Money in the World, The Last Duel, House of Gucci, Napoleon, Gladiator 2 Napoleon is another huge-scale epic – is that daunting? I was thinking the other day, ‘I’d love to do a two-hander with no costume changes.’ But Ridley’s never going to… I have done from space to 17th century to the 1200s to space again. It’s always been huge, and that’s the way he thinks. He is such a visual genius. What’s it like on a Ridley set? He’s always created an extraordinary storyboard, which is such a shortcut into his mind. We’ll go on set, and he’ll probably spend an hour just redressing the set – it’s just inevitable. He might do one or two rehearsals, but very rarely do you have a rehearsal session of two weeks beforehand. I think he imbues the actors with confidence, and he just expects them to deliver. He’ll do three takes at the most. It’s extraordinary. He knows exactly what he wants. He seems to have amazing energy… Exactly. When the strikes happened he said, ‘Great, I can go and scout the next movie.’ We were in Rabat on Body of Lies, and we were in the same hotel. It was a Sunday. I went, ‘Good God, Ridley is lying by the pool.’ I walked behind him, and I saw that he was reading another script. He just never, ever can switch off, and he doesn’t want to, either. He just wants to create. He’s a walking dynamo. But he’s not a grand director at all. What’s it like returning to Gladiator 2? We were dressing 3,000 extras a day on the first one. So it meant getting up at 2am, and dressing them through to 11am. Now our maximum is 750. Now we can scan our actors, and we can make armour for them easily. And Paul [Mescal] is a very good Russell. As the lead, he’s very good and very charismatic. And Denzel [Washington] just rules the roost. Is there anything Ridley can’t do? He can’t play tennis any more. He used to play four times a weekend when we were in Ouarzazate doing Kingdom of Heaven. He’s got new knees, and new knees don’t help a tennis player at all! JANE CROWTHER when Phoenix came to him two weeks before shooting to say that he was lost, and together they workshopped every scene. ‘Joaquin keeps me honest,’ Scott grins when it’s put to him that Phoenix would surely never accept turning up on set to recreate storyboards. Not many people would dare to contradict Scott, with all of his knowledge and achievements, his decisiveness and bulletproof self-confidence, but Phoenix is one. ‘He will say, “You really want to do this?” I will say, “Yeah.” Joaquin and I have a very good relationship because it’s a tit-for-tat discussion. My biggest compliment ever will be, “Christ almighty, I never thought of that.” That’s the best compliment.’ And so to the battles. They are, after all, what the punters will come for, even if they stay for the politicking and the pillow talk. A brilliant commander whose campaigns are still studied at military academies worldwide, Napoleon took on the Austrians and their Italian allies, led a military expedition to Egypt, fought the War of the Third Coalition against the United Kingdom, the Austrian Empire, the Russian Empire, Naples, Sicily and Sweden, and more, much more. As Scott said up top, 66 battles. Bonaparte was responsible, you might say, for the six million civilian and soldier deaths during the Napoleonic Wars – this biopic is no celebration, and is at pains to avoid cliches such as rousing speeches – but his strategising was unmatched. In the Battle of Austerlitz, ‘Now, as an Emperor, he has to have a successor,’ says Scott of a film that hops between bedroom and battleground. ‘But the successor wasn’t coming from her. That was impossible. Because of the past history of probably several abortions. And abortions, in those days, were brutal. They used sulphur and arsenic. So they had to divorce. The divorce was emotionally catastrophic for Napoleon, who hated having to do that, but the pressure was clear: he had to do it.’ It makes for meaty drama that demands both actors bring their A-game. Only how did it work? Scott is renowned for shooting fast, from storyboards, while Phoenix is the polar opposite, insisting on exploring every line from every angle, and refusing to hit marks. ‘When I’m reading a scene, I’m getting the geometry and even the movement,’ states Scott. ‘So I’ll start drawing the dialogue scene. And you’ve got to watch it with actors. They’ll say, “Hang on, can’t we at least talk about it?” I’ll say, “Well, we can talk about it. But do you like this?” They go, “Yeah.” So I say, “Why are we talking about it? Let’s fucking do that.”’ Scott will never admit it, but he has a tender side. He might pass off the many great performances in his films with a single throwaway sentence (‘I’m very good at casting’), but you don’t get characters like Thelma and Louise if a filmmaker isn’t skilled with actors, and full of respect for them. Primarily thought of as a stylist, the director can break down a scene’s mechanics and dynamics with the best of them. And so it was 38 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023 SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS RIDLEY SCOTT

Director Scott has been known for action work throughout his career From such dizzying heights there’s only one way to go… Scott cut down the original story’s 66 battle scenes, but doesn’t scrimp on spectacle astonishingly recreated here, he brought the War of the Third Coalition to a rapid close by luring enemy forces onto an iced lake then bombarding it with cannon fire. In Napoleon, each battle scene is staged differently, and each one wows. Scott, like his subject, is a master strategist, and even after 128 years of cinema and countless stunning battles mounted by the likes of Welles, Kurosawa, Lean, Peckinpah and Jackson – not to mention Scott himself – he manages to capture new images that hit like a musket ball between the eyes. ‘Thank you for saying that, but that’s who I am,’ he says. ‘As a commercial director [in the 70s and 80s], I was very, very successful. I used to get shipped out to the US regularly to shoot commercials like this star bloody commercial director. I tended to be very action-orientated. I was always shooting sport. I shot a lot of American football. The action thing, I think, also comes from…’ A rare pause. ‘The best thing for my career I could ever have done was to go to the art schools I went to. I can really draw. After seven years of art school, you bloody better well be able to. I’ll draw all my own storyboards. Every frame is drawn from close-up to medium shots. The locations I haven’t found yet – I’ll imagine the location. So we’ll look for that location. Visual narrative is my strength. I find it very easy, therefore, to handle eight or 11 cameras at once.’ Scott used to shoot two commercials a week and would operate the camera on all of them. He took that into his filmmaking. ‘I was the only operator – one camera – on Alien,’ he says. ‘I was the only operator – one camera – on Ma^y=n^eeblml. Legend. Thelma & Louise. On all these things, I operated the camera. And so I know exactly what a lens will give me. Today, that has evolved into six to eight to 11 cameras. So I’ll sit in my trailer. I’ll have monitors like this [spreads arms to indicate a bank of screens]. I’ll be sitting there, talking to each operator.’ He’s warming to his theme. ‘Every scene is geometry. By having 11 to 14 cameras, we shot Napoleon in 62 days. I’m doing Gladiator 2 now in 54 days, because I’m not doing 50 takes with one camera, on one shot, and then turning around. This normal fight [scene] that could take anything up to a month, I’ll take six days. So the savings are colossal.’ Yes, if any man was going to command Napoleon into shape, it was Scott. What is it they say about film directors? They need to be like a general in charge of an army. NAPOLEON OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 22 NOVEMBER. ‘Joaquin and I have a very good relationship because it’s a tit-for-tat discussion’ TOTALFILM.COM NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 39 NAPOLEON

38 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023 FILMOGRAPHY

Ridley on his biggest hits of the past (and the future)… WORDS JAMIE GRAHAM Ridley Scott’s always been a plain and confident talker, and at 85 years of age, he’s not about to change. Asked to cast an eye over his 46-year film career, he rotates his coffee cup on its saucer and says, ‘Every film I do, I have no regrets about anything. I think they’ve all been, without question, pretty fucking good. My films tend not to age. I can flick on [1977 debut] The Duellists and I’m blown away because it could have been made last week.’ He’s not one for false modesty, and fair play to him. With 27 movies under his belt, earning a combined $4.3bn at the worldwide box office (making him the 11th highest grosser), he is a genuine visionary. Whether stepping into the future (Alien, Blade Runner, The Martian) or the past (Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, The Last Duel), he constructs immersive worlds that transport viewers and influence other filmmakers. Nestled below the handful of masterpieces – most directors don’t have one – is a bunch of excellent films across various genres and styles, including Someone to Watch Over Me, Hannibal (seriously, revisit it), Black Hawk Down, Matchstick Men, American Gangster and The Counsellor. And then there are the iconic characters: Ripley, Deckard, Maximus, Mark Watney, and, of course, Thelma and Louise. Heck, even Alien’s cat, Jonesy, is a legend. All have sparked countless and endless conversations. So let’s see what Scott has to say about them, and his films, in his own words… GAVIN BOND/BAFTA/CONTOUR BY GETTY IMAGES NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 39 RIDLEY SCOTT

1979 In space, a blue-collar crew fight a truly terrifying ET… ‘I was fifth choice [as director] on Alien. The last guy they’d given it to was Robert Altman. Robert Altman went, “What the fuck? Are you kidding me?” But I read it, and I went, “I know what to do.” Because a lot of it, on face value, is art direction. If you don’t have that alien, you ain’t got shit. You’ve got a dodgy B-movie. The simplicity of the story – seven people locked in a tin can in space, and not being able to get out – is about as B-movie as you can possibly get. Alien is a B-movie horror movie done in an A-plus way. ‘Ripley was written as a guy. And then [studio boss] Alan Ladd Jr. said, “Listen, what happens if Ripley’s a woman?” I thought, “That’s a great idea.” So I went on the hunt for a woman. Somebody mentioned that there’s this young woman on the boards in New York off-Broadway called Sigourney Weaver… ‘The first time I talked to Kubrick was a week after Alien came out. Somebody said, “Stanley Kubrick is on the line.” I said, “Hello?” “Hello. Stanley Kubrick here. How are you? I just saw Alien.” Straight in. “How on earth did you get that thing coming out of his chest? Because I’ve got a print, and I’ve run it on the machine, and I can’t see the cut.” So I said, “Well, I had John Hurt cut a hole in the table, lie in a horrible, awkward position, and I made a fibreglass shell... ” He said, “I got it, I got it, I got it. Brilliant.” 40 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023 SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS FILMOGRAPHY

1982 Replicant or human, you’ll see things you wouldn’t believe… ‘Blade Runner was a monumental, five-month, day-by-day evolution with Hampton Fancher, who was a very special writer. He had this peculiar cadence with the rhythm of his style, which I loved. But I brought the world to it, because he’d written a play that was set in an apartment, where the hunter has kept his quarry, and fallen in love with her. I said, “But what’s going on in the world outside?” So it evolved from that moment on. ‘[The shoot] was a very bad experience for me. I had horrendous partners. Financial guys, who were killing me every day. I’d been very successful in the running of a company, and I knew I was making something very, very special. So I would never take no for an answer. But they didn’t understand what they had. You shoot it, and you edit it, and you mix it. And by the time you’re halfway through, everyone’s saying it’s too slow. You’ve got to learn, as a director, you can’t listen to anybody. I knew I was making something very, very special. And now it’s one of the most important science-fiction films ever made which everybody feeds off. Every bloody film. ‘I hadn’t seen Blade Runner for 20 years. Really. But I just watched it. And it’s not slow. The information coming at you is so original and interesting, talking about biological creations, and mining off-world, which, in those days, they said was silly. I say, “Go fuck yourself.”’ 1991 Two best friends make the patriarchy eat their dust… ‘I’m very conscious of strong women. It probably came from my mum, who ran the roost. ‘Thelma & Louise was brought to me by Callie [Khori, screenwriter]. I read it, and I thought it was a comedy. She said, “Comedy?” I said, “Callie, a lot of this is pretty funny.” She’d brought it to me to produce. So I went around various directors. There were very few female directors at that point. Whereas today, I’d have gone for a female director. So I went to guys. One of them said, “I’ve got a problem with the women.” I said, “Well, that’s the whole point of the story, you dope. They have a voice.” Funnily enough, it was Michelle Pfeiffer [who passed on Thelma & Louise because it clashed with Love Field] who said, “Why don’t you come to your senses, and you direct it?” ‘Off that, I did. And that’s when Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis came in. We went on the road. I still saw it as being – I don’t like using this sleek word but I’ll use it now – a “dramedy”. ‘We had the Time magazine cover, and I was the only one who wasn’t mentioned. But I happened to have been there, doing it. And I also cast Brad Pitt, by the way. And I was the camera operator. I’m not irritated or angry, but when you get a Formula One car, you better have a good driver.’ ALAMY TOTALFILM.COM NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 41 RIDLEY SCOTT

2013 A lawyer loses his head when he tries a spot of drug-trafficking… ‘Blood Meridian we couldn’t get going – because it was so dark and bloody. Cormac [McCarthy, author] then sent me The Counsellor. It was the best dialogue I’d ever had. I was blown away. How do you think I got Penélope Cruz, Michael Fassbender, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz, on a deal? We made that whole bloody film for $32 million, all in. Not $200 million – $32 million. ‘You’re drawn into this sense of, “This is going to go to a bad place.” I think it’s fascinating. Even when you’re seeing Michael Fassbender buy a diamond for a very special person, there’s somehow a warning in the discussion. Bruno Ganz, the diamond seller, says, “Be careful. Is she worth it? If she’s worth it, be careful you don’t lose her.” Then Brad Pitt is warning him: “I wouldn’t do this if I was you. Once you’re in, you’re in.” Only Cormac can write like this. He died [in June this year, aged 89], so God bless him. ‘It’s Guillermo del Toro’s favourite movie. I think it’s one of my best movies. The Chicago Tribune said it was the best film they’ve seen in years. Chicago Tribune usually kills me, and there were four pages of accolades. You know, 42 years ago, Pauline Kael saw Blade Runner, and the article begins with: “Oh, baby, let it rain.” Which is a serious case of sarcasm. She destroyed the film in four pages. I was so crushed. I had a hard time making it, and yet I thought I delivered something special. And then to have it killed… It actually affected the release of the movie. I took the four pages and I framed them on the wall of my office. They’re still there today, because there’s a lesson in that, which is: “When you think you’ve got it, you don’t know shit.”’ 2000 A slave fights for vengeance. You will be entertained… ‘On Gladiator, a buddy of mine, Michael Mann, said, “You’ve got to pay attention to this guy I’ve just finished working with on a film about the tobacco industry. He’s called Russell Crowe.” So I met Russell, who spent two hours talking about the fact that he was overweight, and that he would lose weight. And off I went with Russell. ‘Then during it, I was staring at how to avoid the clichés of what they call “spear, sword and sandal” bullshit. Because mostly they’re pretty bad. I suddenly thought – the golden oldies: Richard Harris as Marcus Aurelius; Oliver Reed as a slave trader; David Hemmings as the impresario of the Colosseum. Russell said, “Who the hell are these guys?” And I said, “Wait and see.” And he was blown away by Harris. ‘I knew it would be a hit. I smell the essence. I learned to do that in commercials. I did some very good period things for commercial-making, where it’s a very strong marriage between wardrobe, how you shoot it, the technique you use. You’ve got to smell it. ‘My films always [influence other movies]. “Oh, he’s got a hand on the wheat field! I wonder where that fucking came from?” Of course, I’m very aware of how influential Gladiator is. But it’s a compliment, so I don’t mind.’ 42 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023 SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS FILMOGRAPHY

ALAMY 2015 An astronaut stranded on Mars survives on home-grown poo-tatoes… ‘The Martian had been sat on the shelf for about 18 months, and then somebody said, “Could you look at this script, and see what you think?” I said, “It’s a comedy.” They said, “What?” I said, “Yeah. What could be more comedic than staying alive, and using your own poo to grow food?” ‘Matt is brilliant at playing John Doe. His humour is very cool. He’s got this really marvellous touch of realness in whatever he does. But he can carry off that dry humour. He doesn’t go for the laugh – it’s there. ‘The stage we shot in is in Budapest. It has a bigger cubic capacity than the Bond stage. I made a brand-new green screen, and spent a lot of money on the deserts and the living spaces – the igloos, right? I’d already chosen a place in Jordan, and I’d photographed everything in Jordan from the same position. So we registered these positions so that they dovetail into that green screen. Wasn’t it perfect? ‘So I shot the film first, and having been to the location, then I shot it all again. When he’s outside at the very beginning of the film, that’s all in Jordan. The stuff around the igloo living quarters is in a studio. If you know what you’re doing, digital is a tool.’ 2024 TBC The son of Maximus and Lucilla goes into battle… ‘Why now? It didn’t have a script [before]. We tried, actually, four years ago, and I chose a very good writer who couldn’t get his head around it. He wrestled. He was terribly upset that he didn’t deliver. He’s a friend of mine. I said, “You’re not getting there?” He said, “No.” ‘That took 10 months. So it went dead. And then we circled the wagons again, coming back with a very obvious idea, and why not? There’s a survivor. The survivor is the son of the union between Lucilla and Maximus. ‘Can I see Paul Mescal being as big as Russell Crowe? For sure. I watched Normal People. It’s not my kind of show but I saw four episodes in a row – boom, boom, boom. I was thinking, “Who the hell is this Paul Mescal?” And then I watched the whole series. And then, suddenly, Gladiator 2 came up, because the script was working pretty well. And I kept thinking about Paul. And that was it. ‘I respect Denzel Washington tremendously [after working together on American Gangster]. I shouldn’t call Denzel a golden oldie – he’d fucking kill me – but he’s gold dust. As for Denzel’s character… There were businesses of gladiators who could indeed earn their freedom if they stayed alive. That was the deal. That’s not fiction. So we went right into that, in depth. Where did he come from? How was he taken? He was branded with marks, and registered with a brand on his chest as a slave. So that’s how he comes into the story. And he’s unforgiving in terms of anything Roman, except, ironically, he’s built a very rich and wealthy career of earning his way out into freedom, and now he has slave schools himself. He’s an arms dealer. He supplies food and merchandise for the armies in Europe. So he’s a rich guy who’s still carrying a grudge.’ TOTALFILM.COM NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 43 RIDLEY SCOTT

Cinematic visionaries pay tribute to the genius of Ridley Scott The world-building auteur behind Oppenheimer, Inception and the Dark Knight trilogy on Ridley’s lasting influence. AS TOLD TO MATT MAYTUM I think Ridley Scott’s signatures have changed over time, which is one of the marks of a great artist. When he started, the painterly quality of the imagery was the primary thing that you were looking at, and there was a revolutionary aspect to what he brought to pop visual iconography in the late 70s and early 80s. The use of smoke on set. The backlighting. The use of certain motifs, like spinning fan blades. They were really taken up by the culture as a whole. But it’s been amazing to see his evolution as an artist through the years. He’s never really repeated himself, which is almost unique amongst filmmakers. Even with something like Prometheus, where he’s actually doing a prequel for Alien, it’s got a very different look and a very different feel. My personal relationship with his work started when I was at school. I first encountered Blade Runner when I was 12 or 13, in the days when VHS was new, and I saw it in discrete chunks on a very poor-quality pirate VHS. The freshness of that vision, the world that was created: it came across, even in that format. I think that would probably be the equivalent today of a teenager discovering a great film on their phone. When the vision is truly as outstanding as Blade Runner, and when the world creation is so complete and so radical and new, it just came across in any format. And when I was able to see the film as a whole, I watched it again and again and again. I always had to watch it on VHS. But when I went to London as a student, I was able to see it at PORTRAIT WARNER BROS./MELINDA SUE GORDON, ALAMY In 1982, Ridley Scott created an endlessly influential vision of the future… 46 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023 SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS

TOTALFILM.COM NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 47 TRIBUTES

The modern master of fantasy and horror behind Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water and Pinocchio on Ridley’s peerless craft and discipline. AS TOLD TO JAMIE GRAHAM I heard repeatedly that Stanley Kubrick was very, very fond, and very much in admiration, of both Ridley and [his late brother] Tony Scott, in different ways. Ridley is, in my opinion, the superb stylist, visually, of that generation. You have Adrian Lyne, you have Alan Parker, you have Tony, you have Ridley – this influx of English directors that came from commercials. But Ridley Scott brings a gravitas to the image. He’s not worried about just things looking good, but things looking beautiful as storytelling devices. So the way he designs wardrobe to tell the story, and the way he designs sets to tell the story. His incredible command of light and lensing and staging. He’s a superb, unstoppable craftsman. To me, it’s just stunning. We talk about the golden-era craftsmen like Victor the National Film Theatre on a 35mm print, and that was just fantastic. It was the first time I was able to see it in ’Scope, and I was noticing things in the edges of the frame that I’d never seen before. And that was a couple of years prior to the 1992 rerelease. It’s a film that I know very well and that I’ve seen literally hundreds of times. It’s one of the films that helps reconnect me to the potential of movies. Every year or so, I will put it on, and have another look at it. There’s always something new to find. Your relationship with great movies evolves over time. I saw Alien soon after watching Blade Runner. I had been too young to see it on its initial release. These were two very different films - they’re both science fiction, but they have different actors, different stories, set in different worlds - and yet I could see something was connecting them. The same mind was behind them. That was really the first time that I ever took on board the idea of what a director is, and what a director can bring in terms of a personal vision to films. Those films are so clearly made by the same primary creative force, and that’s the force of a director. That was when I started to figure out what I wanted to do in the film business. So much of the obsession of people considering his work was about the purely visual, but I think it was always more than that. It was always about texture. It was about creating a world, and letting the audience come into that world. You watch his films, and you know what things will smell like, and what they feel like. There’s a wonderful texture to it, with the costume design, with the hair and make-up, with the choice of casting, and the wonderful performances in those films. His use of music is second to none. It’s like Stanley Kubrick: he’s just got this absolute control of how music needs to function in the narrative. And the layering of the soundtrack on Blade Runner – there are just little fragments of voices and machine noises and things, with the type of music by Vangelis that blends seamlessly into sound design. I’m hugely influenced by the sound design in his films. Watching his films is never like listening to a radio play. It’s a complete world where the details of the frame – the other things going on in the frame – are given equal weight. There’s a very immersive quality to it. It’s quite wonderful. When you consider the individual innovations that Ridley brought to first the advertising world and then the movie business, it’s reductive to try to pull them apart because just as soon as you’ve got a handle on things that are in Alien, things that are in Blade Runner or Black Rain, along comes Thelma & Louise, which is connected to them by its extraordinary visual sense – and its sense of world-building, and creating a time and place that the audience goes into – but utterly different in terms of subject matter, and in terms of emotional connection with the material. I’ve been honoured to meet Ridley a couple of times, and have always had nice, cordial exchanges. But I’m such an enormous fan, I’ve never really wanted to burden him with my outpourings of enthusiasm for his body of work. But I’d love to, one day, sit down and pick his brain on a lot of his attitudes and approaches to cinema, because I think he’s one of the most unique voices that’s ever existed in film, and his darkest visions are implanted in my subconscious with as much weight as real memories. He’s never really repeated himself, which is almost unique among filmmakers GETT Y, AL AMY Ridley Scott on the set of his debut feature, the period drama The Duellists 48 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023 SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS RIDLEY SCOTT

Fleming or Raoul Walsh or William Wellman, who shot one or two movies a year and were unstoppable; Ridley Scott is 85 and he remains a film-shooting machine. The amount of discipline and the amount of craft and tools and artistry that come with a career that long is just staggering. I’m not talking just about his classics like The Duellists or Blade Runner or Alien or any of those. Also his later work. I saw The Last Duel at the theatre, and I had to pick up some popcorn with my jaw! The final duel, particularly the moment with the horse kick to the helmet… I just go, ‘How is he still coming up with these moments? How is he still designing moments that are visceral?’ Every decade, you can go and see two or three of his movies that are right up there. He fights for his vision. I love that he has been that way from the beginning. When I think about his shooting of Alien… It was fraught with influences that were trying to shape him. And he resisted everything. He resisted strong producers. He went in for a sort of Gothic look for the spaceship that was medieval science-fiction, almost, and he contrasted it with areas of the shoot that were Kubrickian. He was innovating the language. It was strong. He was very direct, very simple in his strengths. It was only his vision. From then until now. I always say that the director is someone who assembles an orchestra. You can take from fine art like he did with Giger, or you can take from pulp or comics like he did with Moebius. When a visual language includes a sliding rule that goes from pop culture all the way to fine art, and you discuss both with equal ease, that’s the vocabulary you want as a director. Ridley Scott can give you the visual punch of pop art, like Chris Frost or Moebius, or he can give you classical-painting references. And that’s because he was from the Royal College of Art. He understands the vernacular of fine art and the vernacular of pop art. I think he’s one of those directors that knows more than many of his heads of departments, so he’s not asking, he’s arranging, and he should not have patience with anyone else if that’s what he thinks is right. And that is admirable. Ridley Scott is 85 and he remains a film-shooting machine En garde! The Duellists’ Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel TOTALFILM.COM NOVEMBER 2023 | TOTAL FILM | 49 TRIBUTES

The British filmmaker who has built immersive sci-fi worlds in Monsters, Rogue One and The Creator on being inspired by Ridley’s unbeatable visions. AS TOLD TO JAMIE GRAHAM I think the first Ridley Scott film I saw was Alien. But I think I did it backwards and watched Aliens first, and then Alien. With every movie I make, I basically gather a whole bunch of reference images. I go to every film ever made, and every photography book I’ve ever bought, and I start going through one by one and highlighting anything that looks good. And by the end of the process, you can essentially see what got a high score, and every single film ever, it’s a close call between Blade Runner or Alien. It’s the high benchmark of cinematography and production design, in one. And what’s funny is, they’re not the kind of films that… It’s not so much how you feel the first times you watch them; it’s the fact that you can revisit them 300 times, and you’re still in that world. It’s that perfect mix of high art and commerciality. People say The Empire Strikes Back, but Alien and Blade Runner have that award, I think. To be honest, Blade Runner crept up on me. I saw it as a kid and I was probably the wrong age to see it. Obviously I was a big Star Wars fan, and a big Indiana Jones fan, and there was going to be a science-fiction film with that guy in it. I think it was lost on me as a kid. I understood that it was an amazing world that Those early films achieved the ultimate high score – they are unbeatable imprinted itself in my brain, but I didn’t race to revisit. I saw it again when I was about 16 or 17 when it got rereleased as a director’s cut, and I went with my dad to the cinema. I’d watched it a fair bit on VHS, but that was the time when it really hit me: ‘Wait a minute, this is a masterpiece.’ I think that’s what’s true of really great films – whatever you think of them the first time you watch them, they then impregnate your brain, subconsciously. And then you find yourself trying to emulate them. And you think it’s your idea. Like, ‘You know what, it would be great if one day someone made a movie a bit like an anime, but photoreal.’ Then after a while you go, ‘What am I on about? Ridley did it fucking years ago. It’s Blade Runner.’ It’s really hard to watch films like Akira and all these other amazing groundbreaking movies that are exceptional at world-building, and separate them from Blade Runner. Blade Runner, basically, is GETT Y, AL AMY An icon is created: Sigourney Weaver as Alien hero Ellen Ripley 50 | TOTAL FILM | NOVEMBER 2023 SUBSCRIBE AT WWW.TOTALFILM.COM/SUBS RIDLEY SCOTT